If you would have served our country better you would not be a disabled veteran (Updated)
It seems that a Disabled Veteran is suing a bill collector for the statements he received about a undisclosed outstanding debt. According to Michael Collier was told the following statement when he refused to allow is military benefits to be used towards the debts.
Mr Collier is according the the link disabled with a neck and spine injury at rated with a 100% disability rating. Earlier this year a court had ruled his benefits could not be garnished in May 2012, the funds have not been given back.
Collier says he called Gurstel’s office, and an unidentified paralegal told him he would have to sue to get the money. When he said the money was exempt veteran disability payments, “the assistant told Michael, ‘F— you! Pay us your money! You can’t afford an attorney. You owe us. I hope your wife divorces your a–. If you would have served our country better you would not be a disabled veteran living off social security while the rest of us honest Americans work our a– off. Too bad; you should have died.'” (Spelling as in complaint.)
Mr Collier is planning on legal action.
The Colliers seek actual damages, statutory damages, and punitive damages for violations of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, conversion, privacy invasion, and malicious infliction of emotional distress.
Originally posted byArmy WTF when they cited Russia Today. I wanted to find another source since there are comments like the following below.
The debt collector is right. American wars help no one and soldiers are criminals…
Typical America. Ah well i have no sympathy for any American. Wake up and rise against your pathetic Governments and corrupt politicians and criminal corperates, bankers, and zionists. Its time for a revolution.
This Faker isn’t the only US military veteran living off Social Security while the rest of us honest Americans work. As paid Mercenaries they Volunteer for the military because they’re too stupid to go to college and too lazy to get real jobs. Working for the military they learn theretofore unknown skills like basic hygiene, how to make their own beds and polish their shoes. Once discharged they get free education, affirmative-action in hiring and promotion for civilian jobs, free lifetime healthcare at the VA and a host of other benefits. Once civilians, the many that are criminals, drug addicts and drunks now have the lifetime excuse — “I was traumatized in the service”. We need to bring back the draft and eliminate all exemptions so that the military better reflects the regular society and is not comprised so disproportionate of society’s dregs.
Update Sporkmaster: It seem that JM has found some more information on the law firm in question.
Category: Shitbags, Society, Veterans Issues
and if any of this jack-holes had any idea of what they were talking about they’d realize how ignorant they sound.
Veterans benefits are not paid from social security
most people that apply for military service do not pass the testing. (Physical and intellectual)
as for the last mouth… Lets draft him first. Put your money where your mouth is.
I’m betting the last one is an ASVAB failure. More than likely got a single digit score.
That last comment…
I left college to join the Army. I guess that makes me a semi-educated minority (yes, I’m called a minority because I’m black) who, as a civilian, has used every bit of affirmative action possible.
Now, the reality is…
I served my country. I was unemployed after my contract was over. I worked my ass off to get where I am today. And I can honestly say that A-action had nothing to do with the job I have now. So, the writer of that BS has a)never served and b) is a jackass who has no idea what he’s talking about.
Oh, and I don’t collect any disability (that I’ve been told I’m entitled to).
I read this a couple days ago. I hope he sues the living sh!t outta this company, and forces it to shut up shop and lay off all it’s employees.
I’m all in support of paying your debts, but there are rules to follow, and these assmaggots broke all of them.
As a russian, I want to state that most people who post on “Russia Today” and even the publishers DO NOT represent the russian citizens. Many are indy-kids who think america-bashing is the “in” thing to do. Many russians themselves LOVE soldiers (mostly their soldiers, but there is not so much animosity towards americans as there were in the past) and would not post such nonsense. I just wanted to clarify here that this does not represent well my people.
The post is practically unreadable.
I’d sure like to meet a few of those posters in a quiet place for a talk
Yes, what that paralegal said was reprehensible and he should be fired. That said, hopefully somebody can help me understand this. Is it actually the case that if you’re on military disability you can run up debts, fail to pay your bills, and the people you owe money to can’t legally attach your only source of income?
Here, let me re-arrange the information at the underlying link a little:
A disabled vet living Arizona defaults on a $6,000 student loan, so a Minnesota collections agency buys the bad debt and proceeds to garnish his wife’s savings account. The vet (apparently proceeding without a lawyer) protests that this is illegal, and at a hearing before a judge, the attorney for the collections agency agrees, and agrees to unfreeze the account. No court order issues, however, because the vet didn’t know that he was supposed to write one for the judge’s signature. This must have happened in state court, and there may not have been any other written record. That’s the only way I can fathom the attorney’s next move.
Outside the courthouse, the attorney then tells the vet that he doesn’t have a lawyer, and the funds won’t be released unless he gets (pays for) one.
A call directly to the collections office yields some amazing statements from a paralegal (?).
Vet gets a lawyer, who will now proceed in Federal court to get those funds unfrozen, some smart money, and his attorney’s fees, all at the expense of the collections agency, assuming always that he can show that these events actually happened. (It’s a safe bet that there will be some sort of court record verifying that those funds were the subject of a hearing, and were not released. There may not be much beyond that.)
Further fallout will be that the collection agency will have difficulty if it ever proceeds against anybody in Arizona, and it’s Arizona lawyer better stay out of Federal court in the future. Judges and lawyers talk.
Counsel for the vet is going to love this case.
This could have been debt that came up before he served or while he was waiting for his claim to come in. I had to work with some debt collectors while I was waiting for my claims to come back. Nothing is a simple as it looks…
I will say debt collectors are the lowest intelligence on the planet I do believe. It is funny some of the things I have seen them try to pull, for instance trying to collect twice on a settled debt.
AndyN,
Nobody gets a free ride, not even disabled vets. In this country, however, certain kinds of funds and property are exempt from a creditor’s reach, even for able-bodied people. Depending on the applicable law (which could be from the state or from a Federal provision) a person’s home, truck, tools, or vested pension may be exempt from garnishment. The policy behind all this is to avoid allowing creditors to wholly take away a person’s means to live, and to recover from financial setbacks. Further, Federal disability payments are meant to keep an injured person from starving, not to enrich creditors. This doesn’t mean that a creditor has no recourse: it just means that they will have to work it out.
Chances are this debt predates the injury. Even with insurance, severe physical injury hits a family’s finances like a bombshell, and debts that were reasonable and ordinary six months ago suddenly become unmanageable for a while. This does not have to be a permanent state of affairs, however. Many people with severe physical injuries manage to find a way to make a living, sometimes an impressive one.
I’m not sure about the law that was applied in this case, but it is absolutely clear that the vet, the judge, and the lawyer for the collector all knew it, and agreed that the funds in question were exempt from garnishment. For the attorney to then walk out of court and refuse to do what he told the judge he would do, was beyond unacceptable: it was unethical.
Semi-educated? I don’t think so! B.A. Modern Languages, 1972
1975-1976, another 32 hours toward an MFA
While in college, ran a small boarding stable to pay for the upkeep of my own horse. Gave lessons, trained other peoples’ horses, competed successfully as a semi-pro show rider.
After the Navy, worked in the private sector as a graphic artist, special effects photographer, property & casualty insurance broker, and in A/R-A/P using ELBS Elite and CMS billing software, Peachtree, Excel and Quickbooks. Also taught beginner skating to all ages (2YO thru Adults) at local rink for 5 years.
Then I retired. Now I’m writing books. And I still work in my rate.
Maybe we should reinstate the draft, so that those slackers who made such uncalled-for remarks, including the paralegal who used the blowtorch approach on Mr. Collier, can experience firsthand what it means to do something for your country.
Or we could just drop them off in some unpleasant place like northern Mali.
I ain’t buying it, not yet. Story just doesn’t add up. With all the attention being paid to collection agencies, if they were saying crap like that they’d most likely not be in business.
Feel bad for the vet in many ways, one being financially – you can discharge most anything through bankruptcy, but that student loan debt is never going away.
Trust me I have heard them say some screwed up stuff, so something this messed up isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
A coworker of mine worked as a debt collector for a while. He was training a new worker and had a tandem rig set up, so the trainee could hear him and he could hear the debtor, but the debtor couldn’t hear him. His manager is also listening to the call and the debtor is coming up with some sort of of BS hard-luck story. My coworker says to his boss “life is hard, get a job” and they both laugh. Then his trainee says “life is hard, get a job” to the debtor…
Student loans can be gotten rid of if you are disabled. My mother had hers wiped off the books when she became unable to work. My student loan company keeps trying to get me to get mine written off because since I got medboarded out of the Army Ive been slow paying it. I keep telling them that I would rather pay it off as its not that much and in all reality I did incur the debt and feel that I should pay it. From the way my loan company keeps pushing it, I would say that its not that difficult, if you are in fact disabled, to get your loans wiped out.
As for the folks who were commenting that article up, the stupid is strong in that crew. Im sorry I read the comments but, as my grandmother used to say, when a donkey farts do you get mad at the donkey or just blame it on mother nature.
I googled for more information and found that the debt collection company has alot of complaints on them for unfair practices. And that the lawyer the Colliers have retained also runs a blog site and has gone up against this company a few times and won. Here’s hoping he wipes the floor with them.
Here is some more intresting reading on the law firm.
http://www.startribune.com/investigators/103211324.html?refer=y
Todd Murray recalls the exact moment when he decided to end his brief career as a debt collections attorney.
In late summer of 2008, his boss at the collections law firm of Gurstel Chargo in Golden Valley informed him that he would be going after a particularly hard-to-tap group — the dead.
“I remember thinking, My God, how can anyone actually do this?” said Murray, now a consumer rights attorney. “The whole idea of calling someone still grieving from the loss of a loved one, over some credit card debt, seemed so repulsive to me. I just couldn’t do it.”
@16, ARoberts, great intentions, but if you can have your loans forgiven, I’d do so. I get a BK not wiping it, but disability? Makes sense. I do think Dept of Ed would have a pretty bureaucratic process, they’re only one step removed from the VA. 🙂
Wonder why didn’t the vet in the article didn’t start the process to have his forgiven?
It doesn’t surprise me. Debt collectors more often than not are scumbags.
What he should have done was make an arrangement to pay maybe 50$ a month or something before it came to this. As long as you’re paying at least something, there’s not much these companies can do.
Though, after reading what this douchebag debt collector said and did, I’d say he should sue and then pay them back with their own money.
What I am curious about is why did he have these student loans? Couldn’t he have used GI Bill or VA Chapter 31?
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act is a wonderfull thing. When I was in Mosul in 2006 I somehow managed to bounce a check in Texas. The collection agency called my wife to collect and my wife told them that there was no way I could have bounced that check since I was in Iraq at the time the check was written and I was still there. They told her that they had heard that one before. Then after a few more minutes of talking they threatened to drag me back from Iraq in chains. So my wife went to JAG who wrote up a nice letter explaining that they where advising my wife to hire a lawyer to sue for violation of the Fair Debt Collections Practices act. About a week later my wife recieved a letter from the agency saying that they now believed that I could not possibly have written the check and they where forgiving the debt.
I would also like to add that I used it extensivly as a Platoon Sergeant. I would have someone call me telling one of my Soldiers where not paying there debt, to which I would reply something to the effect of “what do you want me to do about it”. They would reply “we need you to help us collect” and I would reply “why, I didn’t give him the loan”. I would then explain that under the Fair Debt Practices Act that it was illegal for them to call me. I even had one knucklehead try to tell me that it doesn’t apply to the Military.
We have a collection agency that has been calling our home for the past year looking for my wife’s ex husband, who she divorced 20 years ago. We don’t answer the phone and we don’t call them back. When they first started calling, we would get 6 to 8 calls a day, and now it has fallen off to about one or two a week. We know if we ever actually answer the phone we’ll never get rid of them.
I would rather my girls whore themselves out for $5.00 a pop than become debt collectors.
Some folks remind me that there will always be the need for a good old fashioned ass wh1pping on general purposes.
Debt is debt, sort of….one of my favorite 60 minutes episodes involves a Citibank rep talking about deadbeats not paying their mortgages for property now underwater with respect to loss of value versus loan amount and reneging on what they agreed to pay….the first question the 60 minutes interviewer asked was if the rep was aware that Citibank was walking away from underwater property in several major cities in several states, so the Citibank customers were basically following the lead of their lendor….
During the draw down in the 90’s a bad check was a career ender. Or maybe it was two. All I know is you didn’t want the 1SG to find out you weren’t being financially responsible. Times change, I suppose.
I love the ones I get who call new (or not so new) landline and cell numbers with the recording that if you picked up you’re now giving consent. One major reason why I don’t have a landline anymore…the people who had the number before me were apparently scumbags judging by the number if calls I got looking for them, despite my repeated insistence I knew of no such person and suggested they look up my name and number in the local directory.
Had one calling my landline in the middle of the night one night…even after I told them I was not who they were looking for. After the third call, I got out of bed and googled the number they called from in Georgia. Name, address, everything.
Fourth time they called, I told them that if they called again I would be calling the police in their town and sending them to that address in response to a harrassment charge. The young man making the call freaked out.
A mature lady came on the line, and realized the young man was dialing without an area code and had called across state lines somehow, trying to get someone in Georgia and got me instead.
The response when I read off the address he was calling from was priceless. Almost worth losing the sleep.
It takes 3-5 years to get student loan debt wiped. Debt collectors don’t care.
By the way I preach and I listen to DAVE RAMSEY!!! I am not saying he will solve all your financial problems, but if you listen to him he will help solve a lot of your problems.
I have been fighting tooth and nail for my disability rating. I was in college until Obummercare pulled my federal money because I was in a “non-productive discipline” (Religion). I am working at a dead-end janitorial job at 20 hours a week and $10 an hour just to pay the bills while my wife works in a dry cleaners (sweat shop, almost literally) to pay rent. My GIBill isn’t enough to cover my college expenses, I have student loans that went into default because I don’t make enough to pay them, and my food stamps were denied because my wife and I both work (though we have only about $50 a month after bills). Hell, we are both starting a small business sewing/making costumes in our free time just to have a little extra money to spend.
I would really like to see where I am ahead in my life as compared to someone who didn’t serve nine years with two-and-a-half of those as deployment…
Debt collection laws changed about 2005, and they’ve been given some serious teeth. Believe two things right now, if you’re in debt:
1. They don’t care about your problems; all they’re interested in is your money.
2. They can and will take legal action to collect the debt.
Reminds me of my first and only contact with a debt collector.
Back in 2006 my unit had just re-deployed from A-stan. I had to go up to the Co admin office to turn in some paperwork. When I walked in, the office was empty and a phone was ringing… so I answered it “C-Co, SGT Snuffy speaking, how may I help you sir or ma’am?” It was a civilian debt collector, looking for SM who had PCS’d before the deployment. I politely advised the caller that the SM was no longer with the unit and that we did not have the SM’s current contact info, then ended the call. Well, apparently that was not what the debt collector wanted to hear and she called back immediately. On the second call the woman became agitated and demanded to speak with the SM. I told her the same thing and advised her that she had called a US Army unit, the line was for official US Army business only and to seek some other means of contacting the SM. The caller became belligerent at that point and I ended the second call. Phone rings a third time. Its the debt collector again, raging and demanding information. The admin NCO walks in at this point, hand over the phone and the last thing I hear as I walk out the door is “Ma’am, that SM in no longer assigned to this unit, we do not have his current contact information. You have contacted a US Army unit….”