O! The horror!
I hear these stories every day. These outfits buy and sell old debt, and alleged debt, whether it’s real or not. A Judge told me that they even sell discharged debt for like $0.035 on the dollar on Wall Street. It’s illegal to collect but many folks pay just to stop the battle.
But there are a lot of neurotic, petty, vindictive “consumers” out there who feel entitled to The Best and intend to get it even if they can’t afford it.
You might benefit from a bankruptcy if only for peace of mind. I won’t give you legal advice for several reasons, but you may benefit by speaking with with a good lawyer. So keep your powder dry and your scouts out; don’t stop contesting erroneous facts.
15 years ago I had an argument with a physician and left telling him I wasn’t going to pay. His diagnosis was “I don’t know”. I said “I don’t pay for ‘I don’t know’” and I stormed out. It was something like a two-three hundred dollar bill. It was turned over to a collection agency.
Over the next 5 years, I paid that bill at least 3 times before I got fed up and started ignoring collection agencies. I swear half of them are flim-flam artists.
I’m not currently being harrassed for hundreds of thousands, or even tens of thousands or even thousands. They are currently harrassing me for less than 500 bucks. So I think it would be stupid to try declaring bankruptcy over that. But I still don’t want to pay these crooks because of my experience of paying bills over and over and still getting more and more collection agencies hounding me FOR THE SAME GODDAM BILL I ALREADY PAID TOO MANY GODDAM TIMES!
They seem to multiply like pornographic pop up windows on your PC. You don’t dare give them any money or word gets out and every one of them on the planet starts sending you invoices for something.