Bank of America: Hired Racist and Criminal Debt Collectors With Bailout Money

Two days after being confronted by a group of angry taxpayers, Bank of America has fired a debt collection agency after several of its operators were caught using racist and obscene phone calls to collect debts from bank customers.

"What's up, you f---ing n---r?" said one of the collection agents in a message to 32-year old Allen Jones of Dallas, who owed $81 on his Bank of America credit card.

"This is your f---ing wake up call, man," the debt collector said in a message left at Jones' home at 6:30 a.m.

In a message left a few minutes later, the debt collection agent told Jones, "You little, lazy ass bitch, get your mother f---ing ass up and go pick some mother f---ing cotton fields, bitch."

Jones said the calls continued even after he told the debt collection company he had paid his credit card bill.

"The representative acted like, oh, we can call you as many times as we want," Jones said in an interview with groups demanding greater accounting for the bailout dollars paid to the Bank of America.

The calls came from the Harlingen, Texas office of Advanced Call Center Technologies. ACT is a Philadelphia-based company that provides collection services for a number of major corporations.

Jones saved the taped messages and hired lawyers to sue ACT. A jury in Texas found the both the debt collectors and the corporation responsible and awarded Jones more than $l.5 million.

Debt Collector Had Served Time In Prison

In the course of the investigation for trial, Jones' lawyers found that one of the callers was a supervisor who had been hired just seven months after leaving prison.

"They lived a thug life," said one of Jones' lawyers, Mark Frenkel, of the ACT operators. "They have a prison mentality."

Despite the verdict, Bank of America continued to use ACT, accepting the company's explanation that these calls were made by rogue employees, until the bank CEO, Brian Moynihan, was given a copy of the taped calls and questioned about the use of the agency.

"That would not be acceptable to me," said Brian Moynihan when told of the language and tone of the calls. Moynihan confirmed that bailout money had been used to fund the ACT contract.

Within two days, Bank of America notified ACT its services were no longer needed, "as a result of what was raised here," said ACT chairman Chris Debbas.

ACT has since made management changes, according to its chairman, who said the phone calls were "deplorable."

"I worked very hard to build this company and our management team and it is unthinkable that somebody would call somebody and do that," said Debbas. He declined to identify other major corporate clients but said they continue to his firm's collection services.

"Everybody understands in this business how hard it is, everybody was outraged by what they heard, and I was indignant," said Debbas.


Debt Collectors Number One Source of Complaints to the FTC

For the last three years, complaints about debt collections and their tactics have been the number one source of complaints to the Federal Trade Commission. In the first half of 2010, the FTC received over 65,000 complaints from consumers.

"There is this huge amount of debt moving through the system," said the FTC's director of Consumer Protection, David Vladeck. "There's no question that there are serious abuses taking place in this industry,"

Vladeck said the FTC had a number of "active investigations" underway into the tactics of major debt collection agencies.

"The kinds of complaints we're getting now, abuse of language, harassing phone calls, we're getting more of those and they're deeply disturbing," said Vladeck.

Bank of America Employees Charged With Wire Fraud

The U.S. Department of Justice has indicted four former Bank of America employees and the head of a so-called charity for scheming to defraud Bank of America out of $276,000 in charitable donations.

The DOJ says the suspects tried to trick the Charlotte-based bank into matching fraudulent gifts to a charity known as "Hoops for Africa," a Washington, D.C.-based group claiming to help children in Africa. Charity leader Stephen Bekale and former BofA employees Reynaldo “Christian” Villarroel, Maritza Villarroel, Irma DeMartini and Jamal Ibraheem were all indicted and accused of conspiring to commit wire fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.

The bank employees worked near Washington. Prosecutors allege that they convinced unsuspecting co-workers to donate and trigger a matching gift from the bank. The DOJ alleges Bekale then paid the bankers kickbacks.

Bank of America and Imperial Commercial: UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR

The calls started coming in from someone making vague claims about a file on a family member and a matter requiring immediate resolution.

The next level down was that he is a process server trying to verify information.

The truth seems to be that he's "Tom Parker" (or some other name) from the very aggressive collection agency, Imperial Commercial.

Imperial is not to be trifled with. They spout off dates of birth and social security numbers with utter aplomb. They are also quite happy to fire off emails demanding immediate payment.

Of course, they have the wrong number, the wrong person, and they have violated the law in quite a few ways.

They do not care.

If you call the "customer support" department at (866) 351-9793, you get yelled at. If you yell back, they will tell you to call (888) 721-8850. If you do, you'll get to speak to "Robert Altman" who will call you a loser for not paying a debt that is not yours.

There's no telling what you would find at their stated address of 397 N. Litchfield Road, Ste 113, Goodyear, AZ 85338.

Calls to the bailed out Bank of America (the owners of the supposed debt) did not go too far either. They denied knowing anything about it.

Finally, after months of pressure, they gave in. They admitted that the debt had been theirs and that Imperial was "servicing" it. They gave assurances that the calls would stop.

This is unacceptable. The Bank of America, in business SOLELY due to the good will of the American people, should know-and do-better.

Imperial Commercial should be closed down immediately. The Bank of America should be put on notice.