12 Dec 2014

“What’s Up, You Fucking Nigger?” – What a Debt Collector Hired by Bank of America Said to a Customer

By Michael Krieger: I can’t believe I missed this one. Although the following happened back in 2010, given how captured our entire society remains by the “too big to fail and jail” banks, it’s worth putting this in front of readers. Here’s the disturbing encounter. From ABC News:
Back in 2010, an ABC News investigation found that a Texas-based company Bank of America had contracted to make debt collection calls were using racist and obscene language to try to coax debts from customers.
What’s up, you fucking nigger?” said one of the collection agents in a message to 32-year-old Allen Jones of Dallas, who at the time owed $81 on his Bank of America credit card.
This is your fucking wake up call, man,” the debt collector said in a message left at Jones’ home at 6:30 a.m. Then another call: “You little, lazy ass bitch, get your mother fucking ass up and go pick some mother fucking cotton fields, bitch.”

Two days following the 2010 ABC News report, Bank of America fired the debt collection agency, though the bank said the decision was not related to the television report.
Oh right, I’m sure the company’s use of racist debt collectors airing on national television had nothing to do with the firing. The bank’s peerless internal vetting system was clearly already on the case. They waited until the report aired because…

I came across the above, when reading the story of a Florida couple that recently received $1 million from Bank of America for a relentless barrage of harassing phone calls. From the same ABC News article:
Bank of America is being forced to hand over more than $1 million to a Florida couple after the bank flooded them with hundreds of loan collection calls for years – the latest example of alleged behavior that has cost the bank tens of millions.

In a complaint filed in July, attorneys for Nelson and Joyce Coniglio said that the couple had been on the receiving end of “patterns of outrageous, abusive and harassing conduct” by a subsidiary of Bank of America that included 700 calls in four years, after the bank said the couple fell behind on mortgage loan payments in 2009. The Coniglios also received “threatening collection letters asserting false and misleading information,” the complaint said.
The couple sent multiple letters from legal representation asking the bank to stop, but the calls — sometimes up to five a day — continued. The complaint describes automated calls leaving repeated pre-recorded messages.
“If I did what Bank of America did, I’d probably be behind bars,” Joyce Coniglio told CBS News’ Tampa affiliate WTSP.
Yes indeed. Plebs get jail, banks get bailouts.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger


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