When I was a freshman in college, 15 years ago, I had a credit card which I failed to pay on for many years. I regret that decision.
A few years ago, I was contacted by the infamous CAMCO and offered a settlemet of half of the balance. I felt that paying this back was the right thing to do. Little did I know.
In march of I stopped receiving bills from CAMCO. I didn't think much of it. I honestly thought I had paid off the balance.in total, I paid $425 to CAMCO.
Two days ago, I received a letter from RJM Acquisitions funding stating that they had purchased this account from CAMCO and the balance owed was roughly $1400. I thought this sounded extremely high and wanted to find out the true balance from CAMCO. This is when I found out the rip-off. I went online to try and find CAMCO's phone number and was directed to a link to the Federal Trade Commision. Last March CAMCO was shut down for illegal debt collection practices. Apparently, they were getting ahold of accounts which companies had written off and saying they they had purchased the loans.
RMJ bought an over $2billion list from the court ordered sale of CAMCO's assets. $2billion!!! Sure some of these were legit, but I would bet the majority were dead accounts which are illegal to collect and way, way past the statute of limitations.
I checked to see if RMJ was licensed debt collector in the state I live. They are not.
Then I made a phone call to RMJ. I was very polite in telling them that I received a letter telling me that my account was bought by them. I told them that $1400 sounded extremely high. The man stated, "Well sir, that was the beginning balance we recieved from CAMCO, we're still waiting for the ending balance"
I then said that I was trying to find a phone number to cantact CAMCO and that I came across court documents saying they were shut down. The man pleaded ignorance when I told him that they were collecting debts on bogous accounts.
I then told the man that I was not going to pay them a penny. This made him very angry. He threatened to "hunt me down, garnish my wages, take me to court"."We purchased this loan and you owe us this money."
I told him to do what he wanted, I wasn't paying him a penny. Again he got angry. I then told him that he wasn;t a licensed debt collector in the state of Marylan. He said, " We are not a debt collector, we are a creditor". I said that the letter I recieved clearly stated "This is a letter from a debt collector". Again, he pleaded ignorance.
I then told him that if this bill showed up on my credit report, or if I received any future communications, that I would file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commision and sue them.
The line became extremely quiet. He asked for my account number. He even said please. He then came back on the line and said, "This account is closed and off of our records".
That is the scam. They know what they are doing and they have no guilt about doing it. I want them stopped. How many people are currently paying them? How many people have paid them? I was lucky, most, I bet are not.
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