Unicredit America has to shut down its fake courtroom, take the fake uniforms off of its fake sheriff’s deputies and disrobe its fake judge, because it’s illegal to try to collect debt by creating your own pretend court system.
Add this to the tale of a woman who had her car repossessed by Wells-Fargo (via) even though she had clear title to the car, and a new recovery plan seems to be emerging: fuck the poor, harder.
wengler
What happens when you turn them upside down and only lint falls from their pockets?
TJ
I’ll state the obvious: that’s not exactly new.
Martin
Take it up with the states. Property law is state law.
Jeff Darcy
Who needs fake courtrooms when the real ones are so much of a sham already?
priscianus jr
But at least the fake courtroom stuff was shut down.
Maybe Liz Warren can put a little of the fear of God into the black hearts at the Wells-Fargo repossession office.
JGabriel
mistermix @ top:
Yes, corporations have reinterpreted The Dead Kennedy’s satire Kill The Poor as a handbook.
.
evinfuilt
@wengler:
Debtors prisons! Who said they’re only for those in debt.
beltane
Give the People What They Want!
Isn’t this just the type of behavior Americans voted for on Tuesday? Let Freedom Ring!!
wengler
@evinfuilt
This is how we’re gonna be competitive with China and India again!
cleek
@wengler:
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
eemom
Truthout has a great speech by Bill Moyer on Welcome to the Plutocracy.
Ryan S
We’ll see the return of debtor’s prisons before this is all over.
drunken hausfrau
Is this an example of the Sharia law that is taking over the country and making everyone so scared?
Poopyman
@cleek:
Hmmm. Why does that ring a bell ….. ?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
It won’t be long, now. The endgame for the wealthier classes is to abolish the right to property among the poorer classes. Obviously, if a poor person has a car or a house, they got it through some shady means and don’t deserve it. I mean, they’re poor, everyone knows that poor people are lazy and filthy, how on earth could they possibly deserve a car?
Feudalism is what our betters want for us. They begrudge us every penny and every minor comfort we have.
MattR
It’s pretty obvious that this was caused by excessive government regulation of business.
Mako
Pennsylvania, wikipedia, The Onion.
Sigh.
Yawn.
Okay, tell me more about fucking the poor, harder.
Mark S.
@MattR:
I think that’s right. Here Unicredit came up with an innovative way to save on lawyers and court costs, but then Big Brother came along and stopped them.
uila
@drunken hausfrau: On the contrary, Sharia law would not look kindly upon these usurious bastards.
BigHank53
Bank of America will let you mortgage your internal organs. Repossessions will be a little messier, sure, but there won’t be any whining from the corpse if there’s a paperwork screw-up.
Bill Murray
@Mark S.: Hey don’t forget how many people that were involved in this are now out of a job. There aren’t a lot of jobs out there for fake judges. Roberts, Thomas, Scalia, Alito, Posner and Harry Anderson have those positions already locked down
Cyrus
A debt collection agency was impersonating sheriffs, judges and courtrooms. Holy shit. Just, holy shit, and I thought I was too cynical to be surprised by corporate shenanigans. My mistake.
Matt
Has anyone been arrested yet in either of these cases? Anyone?
jinxtigr
@Cyrus: This. I admit to being surprised myself, and I thought I had a pretty dark outlook on the whole.
edmund dantes
@Matt: I don’t think so, but if she had gotten in the face of the cops when they let Wells Fargo repossess even without showing an actual claim on the auto, I’m pretty sure she would have been and possibly tazed too.
JenJen
Here in Ohio, our Attorney General, Richard Cordray, sued the crap out of a company like this for spoofing the phone numbers of debtors, and calling their family members using those numbers, among other stomach-churning debt collection practices.
He secured a $200,000 settlement in consumer restitution. Currently, he’s suing GMAC to halt foreclosures until their faulty and fraudulent documentation can be examined.
He lost his bid for reelection on Tuesday, to former US Senator Mike DeWine; Ohioans had thrown him out of office just four years earlier by a 15 point margin.
I just don’t understand people anymore, I guess.
ETA: Put this in the open thread earlier, but it seems appropriate to the topic to put it here as well:
This isn’t getting a lot of traction, but another devastating effect of the election results is the sobering fact that half of the State Attorneys General heading a nationwide probe into US home foreclosures lost their reelection bids on Tuesday.
This Reuters article contains a quote from an attorney who defends servicers in mortgage litigation that made my jaw drop involuntarily:
Arclite
@Matt:
The state is filing a civil suit, but yeah, if they BROKE THE LAW why aren’t they being charged criminally??? Oh, that’s right: look forward, not back.
JenJen
@TJ: These kinds of tactics are certainly not new, but fighting them effectively just became a helluva lot harder, with GOP Attorneys General winning all kinds of elections nationwide on Tuesday.
This excellent series (2006) from the Boston Globe will sicken and shock anyone who wasn’t already aware of the living hell these bottom-feeding debt collectors put people through. Since this series came out before the complete economic meltdown, I can only imagine, in frightening fashion, what it’s like now for debtors who suddenly found themselves jobless and underwater. It truly breaks my heart.
ThresherK
@Bill Murray: “Mock Trial with Judge Reinhold” was first funny, but now it’s just scary.
El Cid
What’s so wrong with Wells Fargo taking a car which doesn’t belong to them? They need the money.
Jay in Oregon
@JenJen:
And yet when they had a crooked collection agent steal someone’s credit card in an episode of Leverage people complained that, oh no, that could never happen in real life…
newsouthzach
Aw, boo frickin’ hoo. If she had just made the payments to Wells Fargo like they asked, they wouldn’t have been forced to repossess. It’s just like the housing deadbeats who want to get out of paying their mortgages just because the bank may have mislaid the documentation showing that they hold the title. Looters and moochers, all of them.
Dr. Psycho
Wells Fargo long ago invented a new definition of “stage coach robber”, but this is pretty impressive, even for them.
Nancy Irving
It doesn’t say anything in the linked story about arresting people for impersonating a police officer. Isn’t this illegal? IMO these folks should be slapped with every possible criminal charge they can have them up on. Civil charges are NOT enough!
This is just un-****ing-believable.
“I’m not a judge, I just play one for a collection agency!”
I mean, weren’t the “judges” at the binding-arbitration court friendly enough? Or maybe they cost too much?