Instant Cash Title Loans Busted By VA Attorney General

Title lending is the less well known and even more insidious cousin to payday lending. A borrower in desperate shape puts up the title to their car as collateral for a few hundred dollars at interest rates 20 or more times higher than traditional finance companies.

An $815 loan would typically require repayment of $2,625 over 12 months — or lose the car. Not surprisingly, many borrowers lose their cars to repossession.

Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, has had enough of it. He says Instant Cash Title Loans, a title lender in his state, charged illegal interest rates for more than two years and is seeking relief for its customers in court.

The suit was filed in Richmond Circuit Court and asks all loans made by the company during the relevant period to be considered "null and void." He also seeks an amount equal to the aggregate of all principal and interest collected on the loans for the allegedly affected consumers.

Sallie Mae Collections And Lending Under Investigation

If you are a former Sallie Mae collector or other employee, the James-Hoyer Law Firm would like you to contact them.

They are investigating the following issues on behalf of all Sallie Mae student loan borrowers:

Unfair collection practices

Discriminatory lending practices

Failure to timely disclose terms of loans

No choice in selecting your student loan lender

High or excessive interest rates

Unexplained increase in the balance of your student loans

Improper fees assessed on your student loans

No Free Credit Reports At Experian Owned FreeCreditReport.com

Does "free" mean no charge? Answer: No. In another new wave of TV ads featuring a goofy singer working at a fish place you are promised a "free" credit report! Yet, what you get is a charge of $40 and monthly charges on your credit card.

Once on the Freecreditreport.com website, you are asked to fill out personal information and give your credit card information. You must agree to the terms and conditions to continue. Most people just click accept without reading them. A decision that seems reasonable at the time but is a robbery in progress.

Accepting the terms and conditions obligates you to pay $39.95 now and $14.95 a month for their monthly credit report monitoring. So essentially your free credit report costs you about $180 a year.

This is not new. Experian, owner of the falsely named Freecreditreport.com website, has already been fined before by the FTC for doing the same thing.

You’re already entitled to a free copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus every year. To get those, go to AnnualCreditReport.com. It’s the only Web site where each year you can get free credit reports from all three major agencies: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Even better, you can avoid the add on sales pitches and just call 877-322-8228 to avoid the hassle.

Bill Collector Gets Fired, Switches To Bank Robbery

Hurst, TX police, acting on an informant's tip, have arrested James Patrick Fout, for bank robbery.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Fout had lost his job 10 days before the robbery for bad attendance at a Hurst collection agency.

Bank employees told police that a man walked into the bank and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. The robber then ordered the tellers to get bundles of $100 and $50 bills, take the straps off and put them through a counter. The robber placed the bills inside a pipe before fleeing out a back door.

A man sitting on the bench in front of the building told police that he recognized the robber as someone who worked for a collection agency inside the building. Police discovered that Fout, who matched the robber's description, had been fired from that company a week earlier.

Tarrant County court records show that Fout has several arrests on suspicion of theft, theft by check, evading arrest and possession of drugs. Court records do not show why public records of several arrests on suspicion of theft, theft by check, evading arrest and possession of drugs would not disqualify someone from working at a collection agency with access to private information such as social security numbers and consumer credit reports.