Leonard G. Potillo III, the owner of Florida-based debt buyer United Credit Recovery LLC, was arrested Monday and charged with bribing a U.S. Bank official to get inside information on the sale of debt portfolios.
Potillo allegedly paid the bank employee $1 million for details on the sale of overdrawn checking and savings accounts it had charged off. A federal grand jury in Florida charged Potillo with seven counts of wire fraud, 10 counts of bribery of a bank official and 16 counts of money laundering in connection with the alleged $76 million scheme.
The multiple bribes paid to a U.S. Bank employee identified as "W.T." allowed Potillos company to buy portfolios of overdraft debt from U.S. Bank. Potillo paid $31 million, or less than four cents on the dollar, for the portfolios of old debt that had a combined face value of $820 million, according to the indictment.
Last year, Wilbur Tate III, a former assistant vice president of U.S. Bank in Ohio, was
In that case, Tate allegedly took bribes from
In October, Potillo's United Credit Recovery allegedly
That lawsuit alleges the company created affidavits that "falsely appeared to have been sworn to and signed by officers of the original banks and notarized."
The company used the electronically robo-signed documents for years to persuade people that they actually owed the debts and try to convince courts to award judgments, as well as to hike the value of the debt for its potential resell to other debt collectors.
United Credit Recovery states on its Web site that it bought more than $10 billion in overdraft debts from banks such as U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.