Be careful who you “friend” on Facebook, especially if you are delinquent in paying your bills. The website AllFacebook reports that debt collectors are assuming fake personae on the social media site — including scantily clad attractive women — to reach users who owe them money.
Attorneys have said they’ve seen an increase in debt collectors creating profiles on Facebook as a way to get through to debtors when calls and other methods fail.
Richard Cordray, director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has made debt collection a priority, stating that some 30 million consumers — “nearly one out of every 10 Americans” — have accounts in collection totaling $1,500 on average. He is on record as saying, “We will be using both our supervision authority and our enforcement authority to oversee the market and go after bad actors who flout the law.”
Not everyone is in agreement that the approach is kosher. The Federal Trade Commission, another government agency, is pursuing restrictions on how debt collectors contact people.
As a footnote, what Cordray thinks could be irrelevant anyway since he may soon find himself out of a job. His appointment as head of the CFPB was one of a number of recess appointments by Barack Obama in 2012 that are now being revisited by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit as possible violations of the Constitution.
Good thing Obama’s a “constitutional scholar.” Imagine how often he would run afoul of the law if he weren’t.
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