ECAST Settlement Corporation

[aa06a47]

Going through pacer today, It appears I have two creditors, MBNA and Sam's Club that have turned over the accounts to ECAST settlement corporation. Does this mean they have sold there accounts to ecast and ecast will collect whatever money gets dispursed?

[SinkingFast]

Kinda seems that way, Aa.

ECast is a debt settlement company that works for the Creditors. You can search them on the Net. I didn't find a web page for them. But I did find several interesting hits.

It seems that rather than take the paltry amount they'd get paid thru the Ch 13 plan payments, Creditors will turn your acct over to ECast for collection. And it won't be just one or 2. By the time it's done, ECast may wind up managing several accts. They work for MBNA, Chase, AMEX, Sears, you name it.

The Creditors transfer liability for your acct with them to ECast, who now becomes the Creditor for the Ch 13 plan.

Here's one case where the Ch 13 debtor filed suit. ECast represented a couple of that debtor's original Creditors.

http://www.ksb.uscourts.gov/opinions...niOrderPOC.pdf

Not totally sure what this means for Ch 13 filers. It's like the Creditors have found some sort of legal loophole by transferring accts to ECast. Debt management solutions is ECast's bread and butter trade in the Credit industry. To what end, I'm not sure yet.

A thought would be to contact your attny about this. Maybe have your attny ammend your filing within the 90 days to include any accts ECast has taken over, to notify ECast of the BK, just like they were an original Creditor.

[aa06a47]

Well, Ecats showed as the creditor for MBNA and Sam's club. I don't really want to pay my lawer to amend or the court to amend. I will ask my attorney if this is necessary.

[bezoar]

eCast is a junk debt buyer. When MBNA finally called our atty for confirmation that we were indeed going to file, they quickly sold the account to eCast, who in turn contacted us thru good ol' Bass & Associates.

I suspect that they buy accounts that are known to be going to BK for next to nothing - perhaps less than 1%, purely on spec. I mean, if their is any estate to be distributed at all, they stand to make a really good return on investment.

[SinkingFast]

Yep. That's what I'm learning the more and more I read.

ECast is the "assign" of the original creditor. There are several of these type companies out there. Here's one Lawsuit in BK Court that mentions several:

http://www.tneb.uscourts.gov/opinion...r_03-34535.pdf

I think the debtors are probably the real victims here. They seemingly had an attny who talked them into disputing claims they initially made in their petitions, trying to get the Creditors invalidated and the $$ dismissed.

In this particular case, a couple of claims did get dismissed because the Creditors simply didn't respond to the claim. May have saved them some money in Ch 13 plan payments. Maybe not.

Basically all a Creditor has to do to prove their claim about the debt is produce monthly billing statments showing the amounts charged against the account in principal balance, interest, late fees, and penalties, if any. And the Creditor is home free.

What these attnys are thinking is beyond me??!! You post the debt in your original BK Schedules and then try to evade it by filing suit claiming the Creditor cannot prove you owe under some Code 3001??!! Sounds like the BK attnys have a sideline biz we didn't know existed. Raping current BK Filers.

[arkienurse]

Well, Ecats showed as the creditor for MBNA and Sam's club. I don't really want to pay my lawer to amend or the court to amend. I will ask my attorney if this is necessary.

Maybe I can help on this one. We were up to date on all of our bills when we filed. In fact I had mailed off payments like 2 days before we went to the lawyer. BOA sold my account to Ecast. Ecast evidently had the info from BOA and filed a claim against my bankruptcy. Beckett and Lee filed a claim for my Walmart(Chase) account. Neither one had to be added by me- in fact I only found out about it when my list of creditors was sent from the trustee for me to review for accuracy.

[aa06a47]

Maybe I can help on this one. We were up to date on all of our bills when we filed. In fact I had mailed off payments like 2 days before we went to the lawyer. BOA sold my account to Ecast. Ecast evidently had the info from BOA and filed a claim against my bankruptcy. Beckett and Lee filed a claim for my Walmart(Chase) account. Neither one had to be added by me- in fact I only found out about it when my list of creditors was sent from the trustee for me to review for accuracy.

Thanks for the information. It has helped. I have noticed MBNA and GE Money Bank (Sam's Club) both have "sold" my accounts. They both did it after the bk. I wonder how much Ecast paid for them? As it stands now, hope they didn't pay much more that 2 or 3 cents on the dollar if they want to make much money. Trustee and laywer get most of the payments the first year.

I too only found out about it looking at Pacer which showed them as "eCast settlement corporation assignee of ...."

[tsandy7]

It happend to me too

I happened to check the Bk list of creditors and there they were. Also Recovery management is listed for Care credit. What can we do.

Should I have my attorney add them to the list. I have to pay 100%. I don't want to pay someone for something that theyare not entitle to.

Thanks
tsandy7

[13inIN]

You don't need to do anything post confirmation.

Just be glad you didn't have E-Cast doing what they did with us. They sent in their 20+ page objection and took it all the way to two hearings which pushed our confirmation process out a year. They are still looking for that one judge that will side with their reading of the code. They tend to like the way that the Internal Revenue Manual reads and try to apply those analytics to the somewhat grey areas of the Ch. 13 clauses.

Those of you dealing with only the junk debt end of their biz should have nothing to fear.

[Billssuck]

I just got confirmed on 7/14 and tonight (7/18) I saw on 13 Data Center that PRA Receivables Management LLC bought my Citibank accounts (A T & T Universal Card and Shell Mastercard). They must be one of the companies like those mentioned above. And the fun never ends....

[walkthaplank]

I don't understand what all of the concern is about. You filed BK with the OC, the BK process follows the money to the new holder of the debt, there is no NEW debt incurred, no NEW expenses involved correct? What difference does it make which company gets your CH13 payment (or lack thereof)? They can't add anything to the bill once BK has been filed.

[Flamingo]

Going through pacer today, It appears I have two creditors, MBNA and Sam's Club that have turned over the accounts to ECAST settlement corporation. Does this mean they have sold there accounts to ecast and ecast will collect whatever money gets dispursed?

Yes and there is nothing you have to do. ECAST appeared also after we filed and we stopped paying cards in 2/02 and filed early 4/02. We had a high percentage payback Chapter 13 so the creditors selling the debt probably did not base it on a low percentage payback (as someone mentions previously). The problem one may run into with something like this is if there are errors on your credit reports after filing and you cannot successfullly get the information changed via the reporting agency and have to contact the creditor. Our credit reports were a mess one year after filling and we had many duplicate listings showing the original creditor and then another listing of the same showing ECAST. Took us many months to remove the duplicate entries in all three credit reports.

[oldhack]

This is pretty routine. ECast buys Chapter 13 (and other) debt at a deep discount, the original creditor sheds concern over the matter and picks up its 'share' right now (and writes down the charged-off debt on its accounting books), and ECast profits if/when it collects more than it paid for playing.
For the debtor -- and, in the case of Chapter 13, it's the trustee who handles it -- the only difference is B gets paid instead of A after confirmation.
After the end of your case, both ECast and the original creditor are discharged as debtors. The debt is still gone.
As long as your credit reports include all your scheduled debts as IIB, it doesn't affect you in the least who got paid the money from your bankruptcy.

[terryorr56]

I am 1 year into a 5 year plan 0% going to unsecured i noticed on pacer that ecast filed a claim a few weeks ago

[rrockinggramma]

wow hopefully the trustee will disallow that as a late filed claim. Your bar date should be well past.