Debt Collector gets Jail for Extortion

by Mike Bevel,
CollectionIndustry.com

Unfortunately, there are plenty of horror stories about collectors run amok and pretty far left of the law. And then? There’s Edward Mitchell Davis.

Sometimes Davis would pose as a lawyer, sometimes as an investigator for the distract attorney. All times, however, Davis was lying; he was neither. Davis was simply some guy who ran a debt collection business out of El Cajon, CA.

Some of Davis’s collection tactics involved him calling as the “good cop” in the scenario, telling the debtor that bad cops were on their way to the debtor’s home at that very moment. The thing that would save the debtor? Paying Davis immediately. And, in a sneaky bit of racial profiling, if Davis thought he had immigrants on the phone, he would tell them they could be deported if they didn’t pay up.

Effective? Sure. Legal? Well...

In many ways, it was as if Davis treated the FDCPA as a training manual, ignoring all the “do nots” and running with them as “dos.”

Davis’s rein of terror is over, though: he was sentenced to 270 days in jail, fined $499 and placed on probation for five years on Aug. 4 after pleading guilty in October to extortion and attempted extortion, prosecutor Tricia Pummill told the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Davis is also out more than $40K. He’ll need to pay back $40,864 to the folks he strong-armed into paying him in the first place.

In a delightful bit of understatement, Davis’s lawyer said in an interview that Davis “was collecting bills too aggressively.” Change “aggressively” to “illegally” and you may be on to something, Davis’s attorney.

And who brought an end, by the way, to Davis’s world of evil? A former employee, not comfortable with some of the brutal tactics required of him.

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