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JPMorgan Chase pressured customers to repay debts they did not owe, sold collections agencies rights to credit card accounts that had been extinguished in bankruptcy and tolerated frequent errors by its third-party collections attorneys, according to a lawsuit filed by Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood on Tuesday.
December 17 -
In an agreement hailed by consumer advocates, JPMorgan Chase consented to a major overhaul of its debt collection and debt sale practices.
September 19
A Miami woman alleges in a lawsuit seeking class action status that JPMorgan Chase (JPM) committed widespread abuses in its efforts to collect credit card debt.
The suit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Florida, piggybacks on earlier allegations against JPMorgan in cases filed by the attorneys general of
It charges that the New York megabank used robo-signed affidavits to obtain default judgments against consumers who had unpaid credit card debt. "Chase has been successful in obtaining default judgments due to this large-scale pattern and practice of fraud and abuse of the legal process," the complaint states.
A JPMorgan spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit Friday.
The plaintiff in the suit is Ruth Moya, who earns minimum wage as a Walgreens employee, according to the complaint. Moya fell behind on her credit card accounts in 2008 after her husband's business failed, the complaint states.
In a 2010 suit against Moya, JPMorgan obtained an $8,100 judgment. In a second suit, Chase got a $7,400 judgment. The bank relied on robo-signed documents in both cases, according to the complaint filed this week.
The lawsuit alleges that JPMorgan used hundreds of thousands of fraudulent affidavits in cases around the country. The bank did not ensure that the affidavits were accurate, or that they were executed by someone who had personally examined records concerning each borrower's alleged debt, the complaint states.
"Chase has profited from its abuse of the legal system," Shanon Carson, a lawyer who represents Moya, said in a news release.
The allegations of robo-signing in JPMorgans credit-card operations
Eventually the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
Last September, JPMorgan
"Although these issues affected less than 1% of Chase customers, any mistake is regrettable and does not reflect the high standards we set for ourselves," Bill Wallace, JPMorgan's head of operations for consumer and community banking, said in a September 2013 news release. "We are committed to fixing this."
In October, American Banker