Btw, here is one more aspect. There are firms that buy bankruptcy debt. One of the big firms that does this is a Ecast...which is part of Bear Sterns.
Buying bad debt is a huge business.
One more thing on junk debt. That are rules in place whereby the original lender must charge off your account after a certain amount of time. Depends on the type of lender we are talking about but this is a general rule.
So even if you want to pay the original lender - you can’t. They most likely sold that charged off debt and will refer you to the junk debt collector.