Law Offices Howard Lee Schiff

DON T LET THEM SCARE YOU! On Sept. 30 I received the following SCAM letter, word for word, from LAW OFFICES HOWARD LEE SCHIFF, P.C. 10 Dorrance St. Suite 515 Providence RI ; RE: Palisades Collection, LLC v. me, docket #, our file # Dear _____, By failing to apper at the citation hearing, the court has issued a body attachment to have you brought to court by a constable or sheriff. While we have not done so yet, we may act on this body attachment. A court hearing would require a complete examination of your financial situation to determine your ability to repay this judgement. This examination would include a discussion of your employment status, income, and expenses, among other things. Please contact our office immediately to discuss repayment of this judgement. Sincerely, (NO SIGNATURE HERE- REG FLAG!) Law Offices Howard Lee Schiff, PC. This communication is from a debt collector. FYI - THESE SCARE TACTICS ARE PROHIBTED BY FDCPA
Not having any clue what this regarded I called the # provided to find this is supposedly a past due AT&T cell phone bill from 2006 for over $2000. This is unknown to me as I have had the same cell service since 2004 without interruption. Service started as Cingular and about 2005 became AT&T. At some point in the last 5 years I would have been informed by AT&T themselves that I had a past due balance (required to do by law before sending to collections). It is also unbelievable that a giant such as AT&T (provides service to over 98 million customers) would untilize small potatoes such as Palisades and H.L. Schiff.
To poke more holes in this letter- According to the FEDERAL TRADE COMMISION; Every collector must send you a written "validation notice" telling you how much money you owe within five days after the first contact. This notice also must include the name of the creditor to whom you owe the money and how to proceed if you don't think you owe the money. I was only told the balance over the phone and they could not provide the original balance.
There are a host of things RED FLAGS in this letter. DON'T BE A VICTIM, do your homework. There are pleny of sites out there to let you know what to look for. Two I found that were helpful; Privacy Rights Clearing House and Federal Trade Commision.
Unfortunately this is not over for me, the woman on the other end of the phone had my social. YIKES!
PLEAESE IF THIS HAS HAPPENED TO YOU REPORT IT!

This lawfirm represents Capital One. They do not properly validate debts and proceed with collection activity and lawsuits against you after they are unable to prove anything. They will not verify or confirm they have been assigned the account. They demand money far in excess of what they ultimately sue you for. The worst of it, they knowingly sent notice of my court date to an old address so that they could obtain default judgment against me. They were well aware of a current address. They also filed a false affidavit with the courts to obtain the judgment. The affidavit was provided by a third party company that pretended to be Capital One. The company was TSYS/NAN National Attorney Network. Capital One utilizes TSYS/NAN to find people and then NAN assigns the collection to local attorneys. Howard Lee Schiff is know and will violate many aspects of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) and then attempt to hide under the guise that they are hired by Capital One and that the (FDCPA) does not apply because Cap One is an "original creditor." All of Schiff's correspondence says they are a debt collector, yet when they go to court they are Capital One's lawfirm. Beware if you are dealing with these folks. They only operate in New England. Capital One is based in Virginia. If you have paperwork from them with Affidavits and Bills of Particulars that were signed anywhere other than New England States and/or Virginia it is most likely a fraud and you do have recourse even if judgment was previously filed. Doing what they do not only violates the FDCPA, it also constitutes Fraud and Perjury. They need to be stopped, they need to be challenged and they need to be dis-barred and put out of business. Sue them and let your Attorney General know what they do if this has happened to you. All this over an account that isn't even on my credit bureau.