Debt Threats: Collector Asks, 'Am I Going To Have To Kill You?'

Photo by tylerdurden1 via Flickr

Photo by tylerdurden1 via Flickr
A Van Nuys debt collection company has allegedly been making threatening phone calls and there's tape to prove it, reports CBS Local. Questions are being asks after people started hearing things like,"You're a deadbeat piece of crap crackerhead", "We're gonna have your dog arrested. We're going to shoot him up and we're going to eat him" and "Are you going to pay this bill right now...or am I going to have to kill you?" from two businesses -- Rumson Bolling and Commercial Investigations Inc. -- both run by a man named David Hynes.

CBS Local reports that the Better Business Bureau logged more than 600 complaints about Hynes' businesses practices, including complaints of non-payment from companies that hired the firm to collect on their behalf. The Federal Trade Commission also registers complaints on their website.

There are federal rules that prohibit, "threats, intimidation and calls late at night or early morning," noted CBS Local. "They are entitled to ask you for the money and ask you to pay the bill, but they can't take any actions which would cause you distress," said Lloyd Dix, an attorney and member of a debt collection trade organization. An attorney for Hynes claims his client has a "zero-tolerance policy for telephone hostility."

The Department of Commerce In Minnesota revoked Rumson Bolling's license, and other states have taken action against the company, but no such action can be taken in California since the state, "did away with the licensing of debt collectors nearly 20 years ago. Right now in the state, the industry is unregulated," reports CBS Local.