West Virginia Tags Seven Alleged Debt Collection Rackets With Suits In Connection With Potentially Illegal Dunning Practices

In Charleston, West Virginia, The West Virginia Record reports:

• West Virginia Attorney General Darrell McGraw is suing seven unlicensed collection agencies, and their owners, to enforce investigative subpoenas and stop them from engaging in unlawful practices in the state. On Tuesday, McGraw's office said it began investigating the companies after receiving complaints alleging they engaged in "abusive" and "unlawful" debt collection practices.
  
  
• The attorney general said the practices included repeated harassing phone calls, impersonating law enforcement and judicial officers, making false threats that non-payment will result in arrest or criminal prosecution, and collecting non-existent debts or debts that have already been paid.
  
  
• Spokesman Norman Googel said McGraw's office received at least one complaint, if not a few, for each company. "When we receive even one complaint, we investigate," he explained. "From that one complaint, we can tell if they are a licensed company or if they are violating the law." Googel said unlicensed debt collection agencies tend to operate in a similar, systematic way. "If a certain type of threat was made to one person, we find that that's what they do to everybody."

The companies and individuals sued by McGraw's office include:

1. County Filing Services Inc. and owner Todd Loop;
2. Portfolio Investment Financial and owner Todd Loop;
3. Investment Management and Recoveries Inc. and Randall Ray Goins;
4. Rosenthal, Stein and Associates LLC and Sharisse Williams;
5. Vision Credit Solutions LLC and James P. Belstadt;
6. National Capital Management Inc., and Ryan Daniel Todora and Natalie Lynn Rowe; and
7. Dorsey Thornton and Associates LLC, and Wyteria Dorsey and Michael Thornton.

All seven of the companies are from out of state, Googel noted.

For more, see McGraw suing unlicensed debt collection agencies.