Attorneys for Portfolio Recovery Associates Lie

When an attorney signs a court document or contributes to the advocacy of that document, the attorney is certifying that “the denials of factual contentions are warranted on the evidence or, if specifically so identified, are reasonably based on belief or a lack of information.” This is found in Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 11, and most state courts have a similar rule.

I am not an attorney, this is not legal advice, but what it means to me is that an attorney is not allowed to knowingly lie on court documents.

I filed a lawsuit against a debt collector named Portfolio Recovery Associates LLC because PRA called me hundreds of times from neighbor spoofing telephone numbers, wouldn’t say the company name or what it was about unless I agreed to a tape-recorded interrogation beforehand, and (not that it should matter), I did not owe the alleged debt they were calling about.

Attorneys for Portfolio Recovery, David Mitchell from Rose Law Firm in Arkansas, John “Jed” Komisin and James Trefil of Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders in Virginia responded by saying, among other lies, that I owed $2,297.63 when the calls were made and that PRA waived the debt “in light of” the litigation I filed.

This is preposterous on its face. Why would a debt collector waive a debt because someone filed a lawsuit and not use the waiver as a bargaining chip for a settlement? They wouldn’t.

Interestingly, a Trump appointed judge named Lee P. Rudofsky accepted the silly lie by PRA’s attorneys as true.

At the time the lawyers wrote and filed their lie, PRA had no documentation of the alleged debt. They did not even produce the alledged portfolio that allegedly had a single line item on a list of millions of debts. PRA could never find documentation of what or where a purchase was made with the credit card associated with the account. They could find no contract between me and the credit card company that they were willing to share. (That may be because the credit card agreement, if it existed, had an arbitration clause and PRA does not like to arbitrate against self-represented litigants.)

The first form letter PRA sent to me which showed a balance of zero had someone else’s name and account number on it. Supposedly there was a clerical error inputting data. Does anyone else see the irony? Attorneys are defending the legitimacy of an alleged debt and in the same breath, claiming there was a simple data entry error made on the account, where someone else’s data was swapped in for the data on my account.

Portfolio Recovery is notorious for trying to collect debts from portfolios they and their attorneys know are riddled with errors.

The CFPB has obtained multi-million-dollar settlements against PRA for the exact conduct. In fact, the debt they tried to collect from me was from one of the portfolios that resulted in a settlement in 2015. After this post was originally written, PRA settled with the CFPB for another $24 Million for allegations that PRA violated the 2015 consent agreement against hundreds of thousands of people.

The problem is plaintiff’s attorneys are not willing to take Fair Debt Collection Practices Act cases to trial. They encourage the victims to settle for a pittance. I am posting one settlement of a class action against PRA below. The 74 class members received about $135 each. The attorneys requested $25,000 for themselves as fees.

Until the debt collector is required to pay significant punitive damages for its conduct, it will not comply with the law and the attorneys will continue to lie in court, inflicting even more emotional distress on the victims. The 2015 settlement had a punitive element of $8,000,000. That did not stop PRA from repeat offending. The 2023 settlement had a $12,000,000 fine. But PRA still refuses to come clean on our case and let a jury decide what it is worth based on the facts.

My suggestion, if you are receiving calls where the caller says “this is John Smith calling for Your Name” and then asks you to verify your identity by answering questions like your birthdate and address, tape record the calls. The newly activated “Regulation F” requires debt collectors to abide by a verbal cease and desist request if their communication is verbal. Record your calls because PRA lies about how many times they called a person. Take screen shots of calls coming to your phone. Call the numbers back and record the message that tells you whose phone you are calling.

Document, document, document.

You may be able to file a suit on your own behalf by using an existing suit as a template. Otherwise, you can go to the CFPB and contribute to the next action the government agency takes against PRA. If you have solid evidence that the defense attorneys lied on their documents, you may be able to win a motion for sanctions according to Rule 11. A better option is reporting the unethical conduct to the State Committee on Professional conduct AKA the Bar.

Don’t let these guys bully you. Get loud.