Woman turns tables on debt collection company with grossly illegal tactics, wins $10 million judgment, tries to collect

A woman in West Virginia sued and won a $10 million judgment against a debt collection company named R.F.A., for trying to collect a mortgage-related debt she did not know, and actually even trying to impersonate a sheriff’s office.  Now she will try to collect the judgment and get the company shut down.

Elisabeth Leamy has the detailed story for ABC here,   and it aired Wednesday April 25, ironically after ABC’s “Revenge”.

The company that I worked for in 2003 was RMA (not RFA), no connection.

Major security breach with payment processor; minors targeted by ID theft rings

Brian Krebs, computer security blogger and journalist, reports on the major security breach at Global Payments in early March, 2012, affecting up to 10 million Master Card and Visa numbers, link here. 

Smaller businesses these days (compared to the 90s) are much more likely to outsource their own credit card processing (like to Amazon) and not take on the risk of being responsible for consumer information. But most of the breaches these days seem to happen at big companies. 

In the meantime, there are also major media reports of identity theft of social security numbers of minors.  Social Security has adopted new randomization algorithms to try to defeat this trend.

In fact, Equifax now offers a family notification service for about $30 a month, for two adults and up to four kids.  It sounds like paying protection money.  But here is a story about it on Smart Money on CNN, link.   There’s one case of a college student in Indiana who, when getting apartment, found pages of defaulted credit cards in her name since she was eleven years old.