Lawsuit Goes After Check Collection Arrangement

By Matthew S. Galbraith

Maria Hamilton could not believe what she was reading in the letter marked “official notice” and signed by St. Joseph County Prosecutor Michael Dvorak.

The prosecutor had received a crime report alleging that she had written a check without sufficient funds to cover it, she was advised in underlined, bold, typed print.

Hamilton, a stickler about balancing her checkbook and obeying the law, was bewildered. The Mishawaka resident was being accused of a crime for writing a $29.48 check to a Big Lots store that bounced, she says, because of a late bank deposit.

But with the added fees, she would have to pay $251.98 to take care of it.

When she eventually found out who was behind a barrage of accusatory mail, with the help of the Notre Dame Legal Aid Clinic, Hamilton struck back with a lawsuit.

The suit seeks more than $100,000 in damages under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. It also requests a permanent court injunction barring the defendants from “impersonating the prosecuting attorney.”

The notice — and several more increasingly threatening letters that followed over a seven-month period — did not come from the prosecutor or any of his employees. They were sent by a California company that’s under contract with the prosecutor to run a pretrial diversion program that consists mainly of restitution and financial management seminars.

The company, American Corrective Counseling Services, calls itself the nation’s largest private contractor to prosecuting attorneys who have bad check programs.

For this complete story, please visit Federal suit targets collection agency.