EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series that is sponsored by WebRecon. WebRecon identifies serial plaintiffs lurking in your database BEFORE you contact them and expose yourself to a likely lawsuit. Protect your company from as many as one in three new consumer lawsuits by scrubbing your consumers through WebRecon first. Want to learn more? Call (855) WEB-RECON or email [email protected] today! Thanks to WebRecon for sponsoring this series.
DISCLAIMER: This article is based on a complaint. The defendant has not responded to the complaint to present its side of the case. The claims mentioned are accusations and should be considered as such until and unless proven otherwise.
As I have stated many times before — I am not a lawyer. I do that, not because I think less of lawyers, but because I read complaints through the eyes of a non-lawyer, and that means I sometimes make more out of things than they really are. Take this complaint, for example. A collection agency has been accused of violating Regulation F and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act because it allegedly failed to identify the creditor to who the debt was owed when it sent a Model Validation Notice to an individual.
The notice included an itemization table, which at the top read, “You had an account from WebBank with an account number ending in 2115.” But, according to the complaint, WebBank was the original creditor and now there was a current creditor, which was different. The complaint fails to acknowledge how this information became known or provide any evidence to substantiate the claim, but that one sentence is the basis for filing the complaint.
A copy of the complaint can be accessed by using case number 22-cv-01502 in the District Court for the Middle District of Florida.
The plaintiff originally filed the complaint in state court in Florida, but the defendant has removed the case to federal court, claiming that the alleged violations of a federal statute and the plaintiff’s intention to seek actual damages mean that federal court has jurisdiction in this case.
In filing the complaint, the plaintiff is accusing the defendant of violating Sections 1692e, 1692f, and 1692g of the FDCPA because it did not comply with Sections 1006.34(c) and 1006.34(c)(2) of Regulation F.