Listen
Attorney General Abbott is charging the companies with falsifying affidavits, attempting to collect debts based on inaccurate or incomplete account information, and using unlawful and deceptive debt collection tactics.
Mark Kelly is a spokesman for the Attorney General’s office.
“They were using very, very high-pressure tactics to try to get them to pay these debts, many of which these consumers didn’t even owe, or Midland and Encore had inaccurate information about what the consumers actually did owe.”
Encore and its subsidiaries have filed more than 60,000 lawsuits against accused debtors in Texas since 2002. To support these suits, the Attorney General’s office says, the companies used robo-signers to churn out false affidavits at the rate of more than 300 a day.
The Texas case may only prove the first of many for Encore. The San Diego-based firm is one of the nation’s largest debt collection companies, operating in thirty-eight states.
