UNIFIN / LVNV Funding LLC - genuine or scam/fraud?

[pc52straw]

Hi folks!

Here's a weird one - I've been contacted by some people who have received an emails from an American debt collector, purporting to be collecting a debt from an American bank. While the comms set off all of my "it's a scam" vibe, turns out that the firm does appear to exist, and the email passes through every antispam I've tested it with so does appear 'genuine'....

Subject: Unifin is here to help with your "CREDIT ONE BANK, N.A." account
Body: This communication is from a debt collector. This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any information obtained will be used for that purpose. ....

I can't see how they're going to collect if all they've got to go on is a sum of money and an email address. But advice varies - some people say treat it as a scam, while others say they really could be chasing a debt on behalf of a credit card company.

If you go direct to their website and try to contact them for more information, you can't add a country code for the phone number and so on. So it appears as if they don't consider the possibility that the email address could be for someone who doesn't even live in the USA.

Here's a sample of what I was able to find out - in relation to it legitimately pursuing debts, and how to respond:
https://upsolve.org/learn/how-to-beat-unifin/ , https://lork.nyc/unifin-debt-collect...at-do-they-do/

And, from complaints/appeals perspective:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data...sue&tab=Trends

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/data...sue&tab=Trends
If you go to the List views, you can actually see what the complaints were about.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated - part of me thinks they should be challenged to prove the debt, part of me thinks CREDIT ONE needs to be contacted, and part of me is thinking it's a scam.

[efpom]

The judgment below explains the activities of LVNC Funding LLC

https://casetext.com/case/ramos-v-lvnv-funding-llc

See also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_One_Bank

[pc52straw]

That's the thing. I can see that they're subordinate to American state and federal laws, but if they're sending these forms to British citizens who've never banked in the USA, and who are demonstrably debt-free, what should the recipient of one of these emails do?

[atticus]

They should respond appropriately.

[pc52straw]

Unfortunately that doesn't really help. Define "appropriately".

Attempts to contact the bank itself, via its website, for a SAR or similar, simply generate an "access denied" message. I've tried myself over mobile network, via broadband, and through VPN. Their entire domain appears to be blocked. If the ISPs are doing that, they must be doing it for a reason. If that's not what's happening, then perhaps it's locked so only endpoints inside the USA can access the online bank presence.

Contacting the debt collector using the hyperlinks (e.g. the one crafted to set up a payment plan) is especially inadvisible - nobody should ever follow "campaign" hyperlinks (that's what they're set up as) in unsolicited emails from companies they've never heard of. Doing that might even reset a clock by acknowledging or even tacitly admitting to the claim.

At the bottom of the debt description email, there is an "Unsubscribe" link, also suggesting the email could simply be a marketing email.

Contact forms on the debt collector's website requires you to put in an American phone number, and they don't take international dialing prefixes.

So for now, all I can see is, neither this bank nor the debt collection company claiming to have been instructed by it are expecting any recipients of their emails to be non-US citizens, and neither organisation has made it easy for anyone outside of the USA to contact them.

[PallasAthena]

If the only thing they appear to know about you is your email address, and you are certain that you don't owe money to them or the bank I would do nothing at all.

At the beginning of the document it starts with what looks like 'Hi' then something that you have blacked out. Is that your email address that you have covered up?

[pc52straw]

It's their name. And the email address they're using is initial, name at domain.com. They've had the same email address for over 20 years, but in all that time they've used it for website registrations in the UK and European Union. It might've also been used for registering Microsoft, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google and Facebook accounts, but only as a contact address.

Their SPF, anti-spam and anti-phishing filters are well crafted, and have been buttoned down for years. Maybe gets 10 spam emails a day, hardly ever any false positives, and it's very unusual for anything spammy to get past the filters. So, just seeing an email like this one landing in the inbox after having passed through all the "is it dodgy" checks they've got in place is itself quite unusual.

There is a person's name in that email which is possibly the name of the person sending the email, but even that's a bit strange - because you'd expect them to either introduce themselves as representing a team, or sign off the email property with an email footer and disclaimer that explains which team they're from inside the organisation.

[pc52straw]

Anyway - thanks Atticus and PallasAthena as always for your responses.

It seems as if the bank's websites are blocked by my ISP and are not reachable over mobile internet either (perhaps they're region blocked?) but they are a genuine business, and I did eventually get hold of them, and they said they'd take recipients off their mailing list if the recipient contacted them. So it does look like the email was simply a scattergun approach to get people in the USA who do use that bank to contact them or the debt collector. (But customers really should go direct to the bank instead to query it first, not just accept some unproven statement from a debt collector they've likely never heard of.)

If Brits can't even give UK phone numbers or addresses to the bank's enquiry forms, or use the banking app because it's region locked, or access the bank website because of ISP blocking, it's unlikely that the bank can even issue a credit card to a Brit living in the UK through their own standard application process. So unless the bank can prove it's sent a credit card to a recipient in the UK and that card's been used in the UK, the bank would have a job to prove the debt is owed to any Brit at all, let alone prove they've located the right Brit to sue for the debt..

[atticus]

There is a mailing address.