Tag Archive | Portfolio Recovery Associates

Do You Play With Cheaters?

I finally have a good excuse to write about my passion: Poker.

What does poker have to do with court corruption?

Simple. Sometimes players cheat at poker. Sometimes litigants cheat at litigation.

Sadly, sometimes “the house” (the court) is complicit.

For instance, an attorney named William Z. White maliciously filed a lawsuit against me to benefit my former romantic and business partner, Micheal “Mike” Pietrczak. (Micheal is the correct spelling of his name, though even the Federal Court got it wrong when he was convicted of using a false i.d. at the U.S.-Mexico border.)

Mike was committing fraud on me. Mr. White had a suicide note written by Mike to his father that described the fraud. He proceeded against me anyhow, claiming I was defrauding Mike.

Eventually the suit against me was dismissed twice. The second dismissal was voluntary, instigated by Mr. White after the suicide note was sent to me in a production of documents. The big box of documents looked like someone peed and pooped on some papers, then shuffled them together. I put on gloves and looked through each page.

Still, I had a common defense doctrine co-defendant, a trust. I was trustee and beneficiary of that trust. I was not allowed to advocate for the trust because I am not licensed to practice law.

Judge Susan Kaye Weaver granted default judgment against the trust. She transferred all the assets I intended to use for retirement to a brand-new trust that will fund Mike Pietrczak’s drug and alcohol abuse and the trauma’s he causes to his own body. He was paralyzed in one of his accidents, after I broke up with him. (Mike told me his medical bills cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. His lawsuit probably cost the taxpayers quite a bit more.)

Early in the second case Mr. White filed in the Searcy County Arkansas Circuit Court, 65-CV-21-20, the Court Reporter Jana Perry deliberately falsified what was said in a hearing. Even though I threw a tizzy, filing motions to settle, civil rights lawsuits and complaints to administrative agencies, Ms. Perry repeated her dishonest services by falsifying a second hearing transcript.

You may notice that I am not using my usual cautionary words, such as “allegedly”. That is because truth is a defense against defamation, and I know what I am saying is true. If any of the conspirators who cheated at court sues me for defamation, the tape of the hearing will be exculpatory evidence and Ms. Perry will be required to play it in open court with a copy of the transcript on a screen for all to see. (Unless that court cheats, too.)

I have begged Judge Weaver and the Justices at the Court of Appeals to play the tape, with no success.

My 1983 suit in Federal District Court against Ms. Perry, Judge Weaver and Mr. White was dismissed without reaching discovery by Judge Billy Roy Wilson. (I call him “Billy Bob”.)

I was going to use the tape as evidence in an FDCPA case against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC. But Judge Rudofsky is leaning towards ending that case before allowing Ms. Perry to comply with my subpoena.

Judge Weaver and her good ol’ peeps are definitely cheating.

Judge Rudofsky, if he is cheating, is much smarter and more subtle. He allows for Portfolio Recovery to file everything it wants under seal, even forms it has published to the public numerous times in other cases, with just different data. They are able to avoid scrutiny.

This is where law feels like a poker game. There is collusion going on. meaning two or more people at the table are working together. Collusion is a form of cheating.

For instance, I have watched a couple sitting next to each other. The woman was on the man’s right. Every time she played a hand, so did he. This is called “protection”. It is subtle and may happen unintentionally, as well.

I know that when I am at a table with my son, I am more likely to call a hand he is in. I know that if I lose, the money will probably go to him. He wins more hands than he loses. I would give him all my money and my right arm if he needed it. So, what’s an extra ten bucks? I should learn from the experience, because every time I play at a table with my son, I come out ahead. I should probably loosen up even when my son is not at the table.

The difference between how I play when my son is there and how the couple was playing is that I don’t play my crap hands when my son is next to me. I fold 7-2 off suit. I noticed the couple’s gambit when all other players folded and both had to expose their hands for the show down. They both had Jack-shit. (Not literally a jack and a shitty kicker. That is a colloquialism for “nothing” that was taken from poker, because a jack with a low off suit kicker is not likely to be a winning hand.) The woman had a good opening hand, but the flop made it unplayable. The man had nothing to start and nothing to finish. They both bluffed the other players out together. After that hand I paid close attention to their pattern. It defied statistical probability, so I got up and found other kids to play with.

I do not play with cheaters. Collusion is cheating.

My son, on the other hand, will. He once told me there were cheaters at the game he played the night before. I asked why he continued to play. He said “if they have to cheat to win, they are not good players. They might win a few hands against me, but I will win more. Eventually I will leave with their money.”

I don’t think my son’s theory works at law.

I took the case Billy Bob presided over to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and those Justices dismissed my appeal summarily. That means they did not allow me to write a brief. I didn’t know the appellate court could do that. Maybe I should have brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I made two bids on a case in California to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Both petitions for writ of cert were denied. That is not unusual. A miniscule percentage of petitions are granted for discretionary review by SCOTUS.

On the California case I was able to have a judge admonished for his unethical behavior. That was a slap on the wrist. I believe the presiding family law judge took early retirement in part because of my complaints about her. But there was no dramatic improvement in the court.

It is too easy for judges to show a bias toward favored litigants or to outright cheat for them. They can easily collude.

Unlike at a poker game, the players are not allowed to just get up and leave without leaving all their money on the table.

Since the unethical judges will eventually transfer all the marks’ money to the opponent, is it wiser for the mark to hand her money over? I don’t think so.

Because unlike at poker, the opponent is allowed to force the mark to bring more money to the table, by filing another bullshit lawsuit or getting an impermissible order for attorney fees. Portfolio Recovery Associates and the William Zac Whites of the world make billions of dollars a year doing just that.

Punctuation Matters. Period. End of Story.

If this conduct by Goliath debt buyer Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC and Trump appointed Judge Lee P. Rudofsky was not so evil, it would be humorous.

So, I’ll start with one of my dearly departed father, Dr. Norman H. Kramer’s favorite jokes.

He wrote words on a piece of paper exactly like this:

Sex Sex Sex

Worry Worry Worry

Then he told his audience to punctuate the words correctly.

You try.

Sex Sex Sex

Worry Worry Worry

Should I help you?

Sex. Sex. Sex

Worry Worry Worry

Speak the punctuation outloud.

Sex, period, Sex, period, Sex, no period. Worry Worry Worry. lol

Seriously, the placement of a single period or comma can change the meaning of a sentence completely.

For example, there is a case Portfolio Recovery loves called Facebook, Inc. v Duguid. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that dialing systems like those used by Portfolio Recovery are not an “auto dialer” subjecting their obnoxious calls to the TCPA. The decision is 13 pages long, focused primarily on the placement of a comma in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act statute.

“When interpreting a statute, a qualifying phrase separated from antecedents by a comma is evidence that the qualifier is supposed to apply to all the antecedents instead of only to the immediately preceding one.” Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 209 L. Ed. 2d 272, 141 S. Ct. 1163 (2021)

If you don’t fear death by boredom, read this entire paragraph: “(a) This case turns on whether the clause ‘using a random or sequential number generator’ in § 227(a)(1)(A) modifies both of the two verbs that precede it (‘store’ and ‘produce’), as Facebook contends, or only the closest one (‘produce’), as maintained by Duguid. The most natural reading of the text and other aspects of § 227(a)(1)(A) confirm Facebook’s view. First, in an ordinary case, the ‘series-qualifier canon’ instructs that a modifier at the end of a series of nouns or verbs applies to the entire series. Here, that canon indicates that the modifying phrase ‘using a random or sequential number generator’ qualifies both antecedent verbs, ‘store’ and ‘produce.’ Second, the modifying phrase immediately follows a concise, integrated clause (‘store or produce telephone numbers to be called’), which uses the word ‘or’ to connect two verbs that share a common direct object (‘telephone numbers to be called’). Given this structure, it would be odd to apply the modifier to just one part of the cohesive clause. Third, the comma in § 227(a)(1)(A) separating the modifying phrase from the antecedents suggests that the qualifier applies to all of the antecedents, instead of just the nearest one. Pp. 1168 – 1170.” Ok, WAKE UP!

Judge Rudofsky created a “fact” in my litigation against Portfolio Recovery Associates by claiming that I admitted to owing a debt to PRA. He based that “fact” in major part on a sentence he claimed I wrote.

“I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on
a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001.” – see footnote 463 on the consolidated order granting PRA’s motion for summary judgment.

The actual sentence I wrote: “I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001, as I used any credit card to purchase household items, food and other consumer items.”

I could have said “I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001, as I had not borrowed money for business prior to 2013 when PRA allegedly bought the alleged debt.” Still, Judge Rudofsky would still truncate the sentence without indicating the clause removed.

I explained this in a later document, my opposition to PRA’s supplemental motion for summary judgment. I accidentally attributed the misquotation to the defendant instead of the judge. It is so difficult to remember who said something when the judge is creating arguments for a favored litigant.

Yesterday, PRA filed an opposition to my motion for reconsideration or alternatively to compel production of the credit card agreement that was necessary to create an obligation to pay. PRA admitted there is no record of an agreement, written or oral.

Unbelievable as it may seem, PRA repeated Judge Rudofsky’s misquotation of the sentence. But, like a child who looks around furtively and then interjects another lie to try to cover-up for its previous lie, PRA added two characters around the period. “[.]” Here is PRA’s version of the sentence:

“I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001[.]”

OOOOhhh… Lawyers James Trefil of Troutman Pepper and David Mitchell of Rose Law Firm were trying to not lie. The straight parentheses mean something was changed. They changed the comma to a period. But a person filing documents is subject to Rule 11, that they reasonably believe what they write is accurate. The change PRA made by straight parentheses is not accurate.

For instance, if quoting case law that says “Facebook, inc. is right” the filer writes “[Duguid] is right”, the filer has made a statement he knows is false. Otherwise, lawyers would riddle their points and authorities with straight parentheses that change the meaning of the caselaw completely. Don’t like caselaw? Just change “shall” to “[may]”.

Clever, clever children.

If you had a period after the last “sex”, you might not need the worry, worry, worry, either.

Why Did Judge Rudofsky Allow A Debt Buyer to Turn an FDCPA Case Into a Star Chamber?

I can only speculate based on the evidence I have.

Trump appointee Judge Lee P. Rudofsky allowed Goliath debt buyer Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC to redact and file under seal anything it wanted. I cannot give particulars, because they are under seal.

An example is that PRA filed several forms under seal in my case against the company, but forms almost identical, with different data, were filed in the public record of other cases.

I am pro se and modest means.

Portfolio Recovery Associates has an army of lawyers. It has an inhouse legal department 400+ strong. It hired Rose Law Firm of Hillary Clinton fame. Co-counsel is the big defense firm, Troutman Pepper.

PRA is a billion dollar company.

Judge Rudofsky denied my request to file electronically. Portfolio Recovery Associate’s attorneys all file electronically. The rule against non-attorneys filing electronically cited by the judge gives the judge discretion to allow a pro se litigant equal access to the court.

I have filed almost 90 documents. That means that I have paid for four copies of 90 documents at roughly 10 pages each, at 10 cents per page minimum. That is $360.

I had to drive to the courthouse in Little Rock to file the documents. That is about $30 at the standard mileage rate for about 40 trips. $1,200. That gives me nothing for my time driving.

When information is redacted, the filer must also file a copy of the unredacted document under seal. That jacks up the printing costs and the amount of work. I didn’t know how to redact until recently. I think it is easy. You would make two copies of the document, then highlight the background in the same color (black) as the text for the information to be redacted.

One important document I filed was about 250 pages. If I redacted everything the defendant called “confidential” and filed one unredacted copy under seal, that would add a bunch of time to the project and about $100. I had not figured out how to redact yet. So, I filed the entire document under seal.

This gave Judge Rudofsky the opportunity to misstate what was said in the document.

I will use an example of the judge’s misstatement of facts from a document that was not under seal. In his Consolidated Order dated August 16, 2022, the Court wrote: “Ms. Hammett admits that she made purchases on the Capital One account. Aff. in Supp. of Pl.’s Mot. for Partial Summ. J. (Doc. 39) ¶ 3.”

It is important to read the paragraph before the cited paragraph first. “I am a consumer in respect to any debt incurred by me on a credit card issued by Capital One Bank (USA) in or about 2001, as I used any credit card to purchase household items, food and other consumer items.”

The cited paragraph says in full, “I have no documentary evidence because the purchases were made 10 to 20 years ago. I remember and it was my practice not to borrow money for business ventures. The first time I borrowed money to invest was in 2017 and that was a financial disaster.”

My statements were meant to say I was a consumer in regard to any debt I incurred on any credit card; that I never had a business credit card. I did not admit to making purchases on the alleged account.

Judge Rudofsky is infamous for pursuing an agenda from the bench that does not include finding the truth or providing justice to individuals. That is not a fault I usually discuss. I focus on overtly corrupt acts, like Judge Susan Weaver and Court Reporter Jana Perry altering records of hearings.

If Judge Rudofsky was not so darn brilliant, I would consider his claimed misunderstanding of my meaning as just that, a misunderstanding.

But he is brilliant. Cornell. Harvard. Position as Solicitor General created for him to fill. Appointed to a lifetime position as a District Court Judge in his late 30s or early 40s.

We the People should expect more from Judge Rudofsky than allegedly misunderstanding the focal point of a case.

More importantly, when the judge is up for promotion, it should be easy for his detractors to find the examples of the judge’s errors. By allowing big-business to litigate in a cone of silence, the somewhat honorable judge provides protection for his own career.

Shabbat Shalom! Judge Rudofsky’s Demeanor

I am slammed with legal work. I have to write an appellate brief, maybe a petition for writ of certiorari to the Arkansas Supreme Court and an opposition to a motion for summary judgment.

My doctor just gave me the news that I have Hoshimoto’s Disease. We caught it early and I probably don’t have thyroid cancer. That is the good news.

The bad news is that I need to go on a gluten free, dairy free diet. No more (real) pizza. I’m not a fan of fake foods, like imitation cheese.

The other good news is that I ate this way for a four-year period and a two-year period, and those were the most energetic, pain free six years of my life. Maybe I’ll get back that vigor it takes to take down bad judges.

You know I am still a wobbler on Judge Lee P. Rudofsky.

Today he used a word that tips my judgment of him a bit back in the happy direction.

He granted me an extension of time to write an important and challenging document as a “courtesy”.

If Judge Susan Weaver knows that word, the only time she uses it is to demand that other people treat her with courtesy.

Portfolio Recovery Associates’ attorneys at the Rose Law Firm and Troutman Pepper will probably whine about me writing a blog post today, after asking for a weeklong extension.

Writing is therapy for me. Legal writing is no fun. For every one page I file, I rip up 10 more. (Now you know I’m old, because I still equate writing with papyrus.)

Plus, this informal, brainstorming helps my thoughts gel.

Today I am thinking about a concept that I think Judge R. got wrong. He said a plaintiff in an FDCPA case based on 15 U.S.C. 1692(e)(2)(A) has the burden of proving that the alleged debt was not owed. I said I believed that I did not owe the alleged debt, and if the defendant could show me credible evidence such as where I shopped and when, I might be swayed to thinking I did incur a debt to PRA’s predecessor that did not get paid.

My reasons for thinking there was no debt are many. Not in detail, here are a few. PRA’s documentation shows I made a last payment of $0.00. I usually paid off the entire balance of my credit cards in full. PRA’s documentation shows that two months after I made my last payment, I made my last purchase. Then, for the first time in ten years, according to PRA’s records, I went delinquent.

Judge Rudofsky’s rendition of the events that followed is this:

“On March 10, 2021, Ms. Hammett filed the instant lawsuit.[fn] On March 11, 2021, PRA,
LLC closed Ms. Hammett’s account and waived it ‘in light of the ongoing litigation’ brought by
Ms. Hammett.[fn] On April 1, 2021, Ms. Hammett received a letter from PRA, LLC dated March 18, 2021.[fn] The letter was addressed to a Laura Lyman (not Laura Lynn).[fn] The letter referenced
Lyman’s account number and said that PRA, LLC had ‘completed the investigation into your
dispute and your account has been closed.'”[fn]

Judge Rudofsky is a brilliant writer. He does tend to lose the details into the footnotes, which are profuse. For example, after stating that PRA sent the first closure letter “in light of the ongoing litigation”, as if it was the God given truth, Judge Rudofsky gave a footnote that said, “Ms. Hammett denies this but fails to offer any evidence to raise a genuine dispute of material fact on whether PRA, LLC waived the debt.”

Not true. First, the meaning of the letter to any reasonable person (other than Judge Rudofsky, of course) would be that PRA discovered it was wrong about the debt and closed the account. PRA did not say anything about waiving a debt. PRA waited about 20 days before posting the letter. PRA did not make an offer to waive the debt as partial settlement of the suit. The original creditor did not send a Form 1099-C, which is required when a bank forgives a debt.

What I just did is the same thing I did in my opposition papers to PRA and my deposition. I keep open to the opposition’s point of view. I hope they will prove me wrong or admit to their errors, settle or let a jury decide the value of the damages and move on.

If there is a remote chance the opposition is right, I don’t make absolute statements about my perspective of the events. I give the other side a chance to produce its best evidence. If they have no evidence, to me, they have no case.

Judge Rudofsky called it “trying to turn the tables”. I think a debt collector must have a reasonable expectation that a debt is valid before trying to collect, even through non-judicial means.

I think it is impossible to prove a negative. “You have a debt.” “Do not.” “Do too.”

Maybe, if it was not a 10-year-old debt, I would have documentation of my payments. I don’t even remember all the banks I used back then and don’t know if they are in business. If they still exist, their 10-year-old records probably do not. Do you think proving that there was no debt, more probably than not, meets the burden for a plaintiff in an FDCPA claim? Judge Rudofsky does not.

Back in the day, in California, writing about Commissioner Alan Friedenthal, his wife Stef Padilla and the gang of black robed thugs in L.A., readers reached out to me a lot more than they do here in Arkansas. I even had people typewrite tips and mail them to me.

If you are an attorney who is secretly rooting for me, or even a regular person who has intel, please send an email to bohemian_books@yahoo.com, or send snail mail to 16 Gold Lake Club Road, Conway, Arkansas, 72032.

I would never have ex parte communications with a judge, but today I am sending good vibes out to Judge Rudofsky.

Shabbat Shalom.

How Judge Susan Weaver Kills the Economy

There is one thing all my exes agree on. I know how to make money.

I have the “Midas touch”. I am a “cash cow”. A “money magnet”.

My siblings could sell me into slavery, and I would probably end up advising kings.

I am also generous. To a fault, some say.

For example, when a fraudster named Micheal “Mike” Pietrczak marked me, he had $3.71 in his pocket, lived in free housing for dual diagnosed addicts and could not get a driver’s license until he paid off old fines to the State of Washington. I paid off his debts and capitalized an estate liquidation business he wanted to build.

I also worked long hours to help him build the business. When Mike Pietrczak went on continual drunken binges, my young son stepped into the drunkard’s position in the estate liquidation business and we held it together. All the while, I pursued a lawsuit that left Mike Pietrczak and me enough money to buy a 40 acre property in Searcy County Arkansas, two new trucks, two new ATVs and we could live off my passive income for the rest of our lives.

When it became apparent that Mike Pietrczak was not going to sober up, was advertising for hookers and he would probably kill or maim someone while drunk, I broke up with him. (He ended up causing his own paralysis by falling or jumping from a tree, soon after writing a suicide note and mentioning “a tree”, “a bottle of whiskey” and “a rope” in another rant.)

Mr. Pietrczak had started cleaning up an old schoolhouse in Witts Springs. (In his sober moments, he was a hardworking, lovely person.)

When the 45ish man decided to leave me to look for an 18- to 21-year-old, blue-eyed blond on Craigslist, I took over the renovation of the community building. I gave a grant of $45,000 to Community Voices to get the job done. Unlike Amber Heard, I did not “pledge” the money. I gave the money as an anonymous grant.

I am thinking about this today because I saw an advertisement on the Bargains Galore on 64 Facebook page. It is asking for volunteers to clean up a similar school building in Oklahoma.

That is exactly the kind of work I would be doing, if I wasn’t spending so much time trying to protect my remaining assets from a corrupt judicial officer named Susan Weaver and the attorneys she favors.

Judge Weaver already ordered the transfer of the Witts Springs property from a trust that I am trustee and beneficiary of to an irrevocable trust benefitting Mr. Pietrczak and to pay his attorney.

Judge Susan Weaver scared off any attorney who would represent the trust and forbid me from saying one word on behalf of the trust, under threat of incarceration for practicing law without a license.

I also have another lawsuit against a debt buyer named Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC who made incessant phone calls to me about a debt I did not incur. If I win that lawsuit, as I should, I will have potentially several million dollars to invest.

Susan Kaye Weaver makes me uncomfortable to invest that money here. There would need to be a loud message sent to other kleptocrats that they shouldn’t drive away talent and philanthropists by making unethical transfers of their property, first. Perhaps Ms. Weaver could be incarcerated for honest services fraud, or similar. I am not an attorney, but I think there is enough evidence of corrupt acts, such as colluding to alter the record of court proceedings, to prosecute the wayward judge.

It is a shame. I am now married to a wonderful man who grew up in Arkansas. I love the natural beauty and most of the people in this state. But it only takes one witch with a poison apple and a broomstick to drive me away.

How many others who control assets will stay out of Arkansas to protect themselves from subjection to jurisdiction on cases presided over by Judge Susan Kaye Weaver and her ilk?

Portfolio Recovery Associates did not just do this to me or you: One Assurance of Discontinuance

If Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC, any of the PRA Group, Inc. Subsidiaries or any other debt collector called you and said you owe a debt that you don’t recall and refused to give you adequate documentation of the debt, you might think about filing a lawsuit against them for violations of the FDCPA or your state law regarding debt collection.

Agencies at both the state and federal level have gone as far as obtaining consent agreements to cause PRA to cease the bad conduct and make multi-million-dollar payments of one kind or another. But those agreements do not seem to slow the greedy company from violating the same provisions of state and federal law again.

Here is one Assurance of Discontinuance obtained against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC by the Attorney General of Massachusetts.

The Just Us System

Here is a weird thing I noticed when I was researching for an FDCPA claim I brought against a debt buyer called Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC:

Similar cases that are brought by attorneys settle for about $1,000 to $5,000 per plaintiff with $20,000 to the attorney who filed the case. I have seen cases that did not settle quickly, where the plaintiffs got about $10,000 and the attorneys got $200,000.

Portfolio Recovery Associates gave me offers of judgment for $1,000 and $5,000. I told them no.

Filing the average case is not rocket science. The attorneys who specialize in consumer protection law can probably write and file a case in 35 minutes.

So, why do the attorneys earn disproportionately more than a litigant who is willing to do the paperwork on her own? Doesn’t that incentivize the lawyers to settle quickly and often, instead of working hard to get to trial? If one or two people make it to trial and a jury awards significant punitive damages, Boom! PRA and its ilk will need to find a different way to harass and rip off the rest of us.

Records From Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC

Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC, one of the nation’s most dishonest debt buyers, will often tell a person she owes money to PRA because PRA bought the old debt, even without adequate proof the debt exists.

According to a long line of actions by the CFPB and various State Attorney Generals, Portfolio Recovery Associates does not verify or validate the debts it bought before aggressively trying to collect. PRA knows the portfolios it purchased for pennies on the dollar are riddled with errors.

I am suing PRA for making incessant phone calls to me on a debt that I don’t recall and for which it has inadequate proof. Each call I answered began the same way. “Hi. This is [random person’s name] calling from a recorded line to speak with Laura Lynn. Is she available?”

They knew I had an Arkansas landline, but still treated me as if I still lived in California which is a two party consent state for recording purposes.

Part of PRA’s defense is that it did not make the numerous calls I received in which I hung up on them. They won’t tell me who provides them telephone service so I could subpoena their records. But they did provide their own call log.

Their call log does not match up to my cell phone records.

If you decide to sue PRA to try to deter them from making more improper calls, keep good records. Tape the calls if it is legal in your state. Look up “single-party consent recording” or, if PRA starts the conversation by telling you the call may be recorded it sounds to me like they are giving you permission to record also. (Disclaimer: I am not an attorney. This is just what sounds fair to me and what I presume when someone tells me he is recording a call.)

All the PRA numbers they called me from two years ago that I tried calling back yesterday are now disconnected.

Here is a short list: If you know some of Portfolio Recovery Associate’s old numbers please email them to me or post in the comments.

(760) 823-3149

(720) 307-1681

(760) 258-4596

(442) 286-3194

Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC: Let’s Stop Their Harassing Calls Together

Have you had harassing phone calls from a debt collector that calls themselves Portfolio Recovery Associates or PRA?

Their calls begin “Hi, this is Jane Doe, calling to speak with [the mark’s name].” They do not tell you the company name until you are recorded as having the birthdate or social security number of the alleged debtor they are trying to reach.

Portfolio Recovery Associates is infamous for buying junk debt, pennies on the dollar, then using pit bull tactics to convince their marks to pay the alleged debt.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that PRA knew many of the lists of debt they purchased were inaccurate, and actually collected on those debts, a high percentage by default judgment.

I filed a pro se lawsuit against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC to try to stop them from harassing others.

PRA is claiming that many of the phone calls I remember receiving were not from them.

Here is a short list of phone numbers the calls came from:

(760) 760-9002

(646) 681-3007 

(313) 305-1334

(760) 331-2599

(909) 352-1775

(760) 677-3517

(518) 304-1182

(661)689-5751

(760) 640-3194 

(760) 291-4107

(760) 823-3149

(760) 227-1170

(760) 704-0270

(760) 760-9002

If you received a call from any of these numbers or other numbers owned by Portfolio Recovery Associates, please send an email to bohemian_books@yahoo.com and we can share info.

If you are being sued by Portfolio Recovery Associates, let’s chat. I am not an attorney and cannot give legal advice, but I can share my story with you, links to informative websites and encouragement.

It is likely that your experience will be interesting and helpful to me, as well.

And please, post PRA phone numbers that you know of in the comments below. They neighbor spoof, so there are hundreds or thousands of numbers, too many to block.

Hint of the Day: Read the Rules

Lawyers will often try to trick pro se litigants about the law. They may do this to other lawyers as well. I don’t know for sure because I am not a lawyer.

This is not legal advice.

This is a personal experience.

I filed a document in a federal case against Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC, a giant debt buying company known to collect on alleged debts from portfolios they know to be inaccurate.

PRA had sent me about 2,000 pages of documents that were marked “confidential”. I am challenging the designation, because the vast majority or all the documents should not be marked confidential by PRA.

The problem is that the court does not allow non-attorneys to file electronically. The pro se litigant is usually self-represented because she cannot afford an attorney. But filing paper copies costs 10 cents per page, plus is time consuming. And four copies are required. So, with the cost of gas to drive to the courthouse to file, the 2,000 pages times four would cost $830 to file.

The court for the Eastern District of Arkansas is full of kind and professional employees. (There are a few bad apples, but that is another story.)

I am not going to name names, because the bad apples try their hardest to transfer their rot onto the good ones.

A few of the good ones gave me permission to file the 2,000 pages on a DVD, an electronic medium.

The paper filings are input to the electronic filing system by the clerk. This causes electronic service, through email, to opposing counsel.

But the 2,000 page DVD did not get loaded onto the system. It was confidential, for the time being, so it would not have been posted even if on paper.

I should have emailed a copy to opposing counsel. Opposing counsel sent an email, and rightly so, to point out my error.

Here is where an attorney, John “Jed” E. Komisin of the Troutman Pepper firm got a little tricky. He wrote:

“Please provide us a copy at your earliest convenience, and please make sure you continue to provide us with copies of all materials submitted to the Court in this matter.”

I replied that the exhibit I filed was the file they created and shared with me through Workshare.

Mr. Komisin’s reply: “Under the federal rules you are required to provide service copies of any materials filed with the Court to any opposing party.  This is to ensure that all parties are provided with any materials presented to the Court.”

Sounds logical and I had no qualms emailing a copy of the file back to its originator.

But what if it was not so simple? What if I filed evidence that was not in an easy format to reproduce? One example might be if a gun was used in the incident complained about. What does the litigant do if she files the gun as evidence? Find an exact replica and buy it for opposing counsel?

So, I did what I suggest you do if you ever need to know a rule. Read the rule book.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure are easy to find on the internet. They are free to read. They are not difficult to understand, once you gain a little legal vocabulary. (If you found this blog and read this far, it is likely you can understand the rules.)

Rule 5 discusses service of pleadings and other papers. (Something many attorneys and judges don’t even recognize is that motions are not “pleadings”.)

Rule 5 says:

(a) Service: When Required.

(1) In General. Unless these rules provide otherwise, each of the following papers must be served on every party:

(A) an order stating that service is required;

(B) a pleading filed after the original complaint, unless the court orders otherwise under Rule 5(c) because there are numerous defendants;

(C) a discovery paper required to be served on a party, unless the court orders otherwise;

(D) a written motion, except one that may be heard ex parte; and

(E) a written notice, appearance, demand, or offer of judgment, or any similar paper.

and “(D) Same as a Written Paper. A paper filed electronically is a written paper for purposes of these rules.”

The rules do not say “materials” as Mr. Komisin suggests. The rules talk about “papers”.

Nit-picky? Maybe. This is just an illustration of how attorneys will sometimes change one word of a rule or statute to change the meaning that the legislature intended. A favorite attorney trick is changing “and” to “or”. Super popular amongst the legal set is using “and/or”, which is not a word and is ambiguous. That is my new pet peeve.

The hint for the day is to look up every rule that is stated by the opposing party’s counsel. Even if they use quotation marks, there will often times be little, tiny variations from the actual language that change the meaning significantly.

These changes are made because the attorney is trying to trick you, the Court and/or the attorney is a slime bag.