Today I’, talking with consumer attorney Jason Rapa from Pennsylvania. We talk about both debt validation and debt collector behavior.

Today, bad debt buyers are unable to cough up proof a debt is valid and actually legally collectable but depending on where you live, the inability to validate the debt can’t be relied on alone to prevent you from being sued for an old debt.

Debts as little as $90 have wound up in court with the consumer being sued. Unless you take being sued seriously you will lose and may have your wages garnished for even small amounts.

While validating the debt is a tool that might be used, Mr. Rapa advises to stay away from one of the many debt validation companies, that for thousands of dollars, tries to sell you a service to make debt go away through validation tricks. His advice, which is sound, is to instead find an attorney licensed in your state that is aware of how to handle collection issues.

Simply asking a debt collector to prove the validity of a debt does not stop collection activity and if it does, it is not uncommon for the debt to simply be passed to a different collection company to pursue the consumer.

Mr. Rapa says only a small percentage of debt sold by original creditors could be factually validated if push comes to shove. Debt buyers are paying pennies per dollar of debt knowing they are buying debt which could not be validated.

These debt buyers will then sue the consumer and hope to get a judgment. These companies know that when the average consumer is sued they simply stick their head in the sand and wind up losing simply because they did not show up to fight the claim.

Jason Rapa says that in his experience many of the lawsuits by creditors contain errors, incorrect facts, and just erroneous claims of amounts due.

During the interview we talk about several unbelievable real cases of how debt collectors try to scare, threaten and intimidate people into paying with threats of AIDS and public intimidation.

Below is a news story that includes Mr. Rapa and has the audio file of the collection call I mentioned in the interview where the debt collector threatens the consumer that unless he pays the collector will call his neighbors and claim he’s a pedophile.