Unclear Scam Story Implicates Collections Industry

Once upon a time two Buffalo scam artists, Timothy E. Arent and Neil G. Wieczkowski, did some bad things.

Arent and Wieczkowski may or may not be at the heart of this news story currently running on MyFoxLA.com. (Clip below.) Or they may not be. The story is big on outrage (with a hint of racism), but sort of sketchy on facts.

The MyFoxLA story details consumers receiving phone calls from overseas scam artists posing as debt collectors. (That “hint of racism” I mentioned? Comes from this: “The callers have heavy accents.” Is that pertinent information? I’m voting “no.” It’s mostly just provocative with shades of incendiary.)

The story alleges that these consumers are the victims of identity theft. The claim is that, after filling out an online form for a loan, their personal information was sold to scammers overseas. Those scammers are able to use that information to part the unwitting from their money with alarming frequency — mostly because the scammers are using threats of jail and violence in their tactics.

How do Arent and Wieczkowski figure in to all of this? Good question. There’s a point in the video where the reporter, John Schwada, takes us down this rabbit hole: “Two defendants named in a complaint bilked people out of millions. Accused of buying information from insiders at a debt collection agency, they deposited approximately 6.8 million dollars in checks written by over a thousand victims from all over the country, for payment of completely fictitious debt. They both pleaded guilty to felony charges of mail fraud and tax evasion and are awaiting sentencing.”

During this voice-over, MyFoxLA shows a glimpse of a legal complaint that lists Arent and Wieczkowski. However, it’s not clear if Arent and Wieczkowski were also behind leaking this personal information to overseas scammers or, instead, if Arent and Wieczkowski were just the most recent names to make news in this kind of scam.

What is clear, though, is that this isn’t a collections industry issue: it’s a scammer issue. And even when MyFoxLA tries to connect the scam with the misdeeds of an unnamed collection agency, it’s still not fair to suggest that this is anything more than the illegal doings of people not in the industry, but instead using the trappings of the industry to legitimize their scam. (It would be like assuming the worst of all tailors based on the actions of Jame Gumb.)

Do any of you out there have any additional information on this? Is there a Arent/Wieczkowski connection? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Phone Fakers: Debt Collection Scams: MyFoxLA.com