The Texas Debt Collection Act prohibits a debt collector from using or threatening violence or other criminal means to collect a debt.  This is an obvious prohibition:  a person cannot commit, or threaten to commit, criminal acts in order to obtain money from another person.  Aside from being obvious, it might appear that the Act prohibits conduct that might never occur.  Surely debt collectors don’t commit crimes just to collect debts.  We have actually seen the following in cases we have handled:

• Threat to “shank” someone
• Threat to cut someone
• Assault
• Threat of assault
• Unlawfully obtaining telephone call records

If you have been threatened with bodily injury by a debt collector, contact the police immediately.  You might need to be persistent.  Some police departments will tell you that you are calling about a civil matter, and that there is nothing that the police can do.  However, when someone threatens to harm you, the threat might be a commission of a crime.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 10:35 am and is filed under Abusive telephone calls, Tactics, Texas Debt Collection Act. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.