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“In a series of articles earlier this year, seven current and former Chase employees told American Banker that the managers of a credit card processing facility in San Antonio ordered its employees to robo-sign affidavits attesting to the accuracy of debts owed by Chase customers.

“With an autodialer, millions of calls can be blasted out in a matter of hours, bombarding people in a struggling economy with promises of debt assistance and cheap loans.

An Attorney walks into my office and asks, “I have a client that is being harassed about some money they allegedly owe. Is that covered by the FDCPA?” My answer is “That depends.”

Collection letters sent by the thousands to people across the country who have written bad checks and threaten jail if they don’t pay up. While they bear the seal and signature of the local district attorney’s office, they have come straight from the Debt Collector, and no district attorney has reviewed them before they were mailed.

At a protest against mounting student loan debt, students wore T-shirts with the amount they owed scribbled across the front — $90,000, $75,000, $20,000. A debt collection consultant, Jerry Ashton, who witnessed it remarked in a column he wrote for a trade publication, InsideARM.com, “I couldn’t believe the accumulated wealth they represent — for our industry…. It was lip-smacking.”

When dealing with a debt collection lawsuit, I am sure that most people think “I would love to be represented by a lawyer!” The problem is that in most cases, the amount they have been sued for is relatively small and the thought of hiring an attorney is simply outside of the budget. If they had money for a lawyer, they wouldn’t be in debt, right? That may not be true for 2 reasons:

Debtors are sometimes summoned to court repeatedly, even over trivial amounts of money. Jail time comes into play after a creditor gets a judgment (probably default) against a debtor, then asks to have the debtor summoned to court for an “examination” to explore assets.

The same problems that have plagued the foreclosure process are now routinely being found in the debt collection practices of credit card companies.

As credit issuers ranging from American Express to Citigroup attempt to collect on billions in delinquent loans, consumers are claiming in dozens of lawsuits that the lenders have been unable to show that they actually owe the debt and are pursuing them with fabricated documents and generic testimony, the paper reports.