Debt Collection Fraud Call Recording
Listen to an employee of unscrupulous debt collector John Todd Williams trick a victim into paying by pretending to be a law enforcement officer and illegally threatening arrest and other legal action.
Video Transcript
Uh, this is Chief Investigator Sharon Wright. Am I speaking with ____?
Yes.
Again, my name is Investigator Sharon Wright.
I am investigating a criminal complaint that has been forwarded here in the office against you by ___ Cash Express.
We are in the process of proceeding against you legally.
Now, prior to forwarding this to your local authorities, and, in return, them issuing a warrant for your arrest,
I did want to contact you to get a statement and find out exactly what were your intentions.
But, what is this? I’m not understanding—what is this?
_____ Cash Express is stating that you did walk into their facility to obtain a payday loan.
You did give them your personal checking information, along with a date as to when they can extract the funds to be paid back for the loan.
Once they went to receive the funds, the funds were not available.
Now, they did make several attempts to try to contact you to rectify it.
They sent it to three different collection agencies.
They also made the attempts in trying to rectify it, received no resolution.
So they did transfer your file to my office.
I said that we go ahead and proceed legally.
Now prior to forwarding it, like I said, to your local authorities, we did want to contact you, get a statement, find out exactly what was going on, and what are your intentions on trying to rectify it now that you are aware of the issue here.
Okay, so rectify means what?
Well, I mean, of course to hold it from going legal, you know, they want the money.
Okay.
However, you have—
What amount is this?
You have a balance of $819.04.
Okay, at this moment right now I’m not working.
Well, see, with that being said, I would have no choice but to forward it to Los Angeles County.
However, Los Angeles County will issue you with a warrant for your arrest.
It will be for depository check fraud as well as theft by deception.
Is there any payments that I can do?
Now, they’re willing to set you up on a payment arrangement.
However, they require that you come up with a down payment of at least half of your balance.
And then what we’ll do is make an arrangement with you on the remaining portion of the balance.
However, that will go ahead and get it put on hold. It will avoid all legal actions from being pursued.
Okay, so let me do that then. Because I don’t want none of the…
Because right now I’m actually pregnant, so I can’t be going through stuff like this.
Right. Uh, hold for one minute.
I’m actually seven—I’m actually eight months. I turn eight months next week, so, I mean, I can’t…
Hold for one moment. Let me talk with the attorney. Okay?
Okay.
Okay, that’s fine. Go ahead, uh, grab your checking information, and you let me know when you’re ready.
I’m going to have them send you out a letter.
Once you receive that letter, you have two hours to contact me back.
If I do not hear from you within those two hours, at that time, I will take it as a refusal to rectify on a voluntary basis,
I will go ahead and sign off on it, the attorney will go ahead and, at that time, forward it to Los Angeles County for a warrant to be issued for your arrest.
I’m not trying to say that I’m not going to pay it. I’m just—
Ma’am, I know.
I want to know that I’m going to do this correctly because I don’t want it to backfire on me and then you come and tell me another thing.
Ma’am
So.
It’s debit, credit, or check, whichever way works best for you.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay? And good luck to you.
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