Now accepting Consumer, Elderlaw, and Estate Planning clients with ARAG legal insurance coverage6/20/2018 A lot of folks, including a large number of union members in the Salem area have access to legal insurance coverage as a workplace benefit, so I have decided to try out working with those clients. If you have ARAG coverage, you may see my name on a referral list if you inquire with ARAG about getting some legal help for a dispute or getting some estate planning done, or addressing a concern about yourself or an elder in your family. I haven't changed my practice areas but if your issue falls into one of my focus areas and you have ARAG coverage, you can contact me for a consultation to see if I can help you.
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The Norfolk, VA paper has an interesting story that again demonstrates that just because someone shoves papers at you and claims you owe them money, it doesn't necessarily mean that you do. You might owe SOMEBODY something, but it's vital that you pay only the true creditor if you pay the debt -- because the true creditor's claims against you aren't wiped out by your payment to a scammer like this.
Very interesting story -- if you have lost sleep or paid for credit freezes and account monitoring, you can seek to recover those damages in small claims court. Equifax might very well come to regret the push against class actions. Like many plaintiff attorneys, I offer consults to people who want to represent themselves in small claims court to advise you about how to best present your case and increase your chances of winning it. (Note these are paid consults, not free.) PEOPLE ARE TAKING EQUIFAX TO SMALL CLAIMS COURT AND WINNING The bots are getting better and better — not perfect yet, but the speed in which they are climbing the learning curve is amazing. I got a scary-good email trying to scam me today. The only immediately obvious tip is the mangled “Department of Treasure” at the bottom (that and the fact that I didn’t request a transcript). But the usual giveaway for email scams, a spoofed email address, was not there. When I looked for the actual sender email address by hovering the mouse over the FROM email (which shows the actual email usually), it said exactly the same as the visible email address. Thus, it appears that the RussBots have penetrated the IRS public email address book or (insert Trump joke here). So I hovered over the “Download Your Tax Account Transcript” link and that’s when the connection to Russia shows up — note the .ru on the attack payload. REMEMBER: In pre-Internet days, you generally used to have to go to the seedy side of town to run into the bad guys. With the Internet, every criminal in the world not serving in Congress is just a click away from you. This is what the email looked like But what it was actually doing was trying to get me to click on that link in the middle which would have downloaded malware onto my computer, probably capturing it to put it to work mining bitcoins or other scammy cryptocurrency, or installing ransomware, or both. Another in the series of consumer advice topics from the National Consumer Law Center.
Here's a measure that everyone who is anywhere on the political spectrum can support -- require that publicly traded corporations submit their Oregon tax data to the Secretary of State so that we can all understand who pays what. Note that there is a three-year delay built right in, so that competitors won't be able to use the data to disadvantage any corporation.
https://www.consumeradvocates.org/we-need-your-help-tell-cfpb-keep-complaint-database-open-public We Need Your Help - Tell the CFPB to Keep the Complaint Database Open to the Public The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau —created by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis to help consumers fight back against unfair and illegal banking and lending practices – is under new leadership, and they are threatening to take down the important online public consumer complaint database. Consumers across the country have submitted more than 1 million complaints against banks, lenders, debt collectors, and credit reporting agencies to the consumer complaint database. Before the CFPB, consumers’ complaints against powerful banks and lenders fell on deaf ears. Some harmed consumers had virtually no place to go to report grievances. The CFPB needs to hear from us now. Tell the CFPB to Keep the Public, User-Friendly Consumer Complaint Database (See Our Model Letter). The new leadership at the CFPB has asked for feedback, and signs indicate that they want to shut down public access to the complaints. Consumers will no longer have a way to review complaints and research the conduct of banks, lenders, debt collectors, and other financial institutions. Submit A Letter: Tell the CFPB to Keep the Database Open and Available to the Public. The CFPB built a great tool that empowers consumers like us to share our grievances with not just the agency but also with fellow customers of our banks and lenders. We can’t let this “new” CFPB take the public complaint database away from us. Let’s fight for it together. 29 May 2018 Another good article in the new National Consumer Law Center series of pieces written to help non-lawyers understand consumer legal issues better. NCLC is a great outfit that helps consumer attorneys help real people all over the US. A Reverse Mortgage Primer: Consumer Advice from NCLC JFK: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”5/23/2018 Just something to consider as the Supreme Court keeps up its tireless march to crush real people -- flesh and blood Americans -- under the heel of unlimited corporate power and a privatized, secret "justice" system. The ghost of Justice Powell looks up from the fires of Hell and smiles broadly.
Hardly a day goes by in my practice that I don't rely on resources or refer someone to resources produced by the National Consumer Law Center. They are starting a series of guides for consumers, and they picked a good one to start with. They "encourage readers to share this article with clients, counselors, and others working with families in financial distress" so if you know someone struggling with medical debts, please pass this along. Dealing with Medical Debt: Consumer Advice from NCLC Mike Shurtleff is a good attorney here in Salem who fights on the side of real people. He wrote and posted a great article on LinkedIn describing just another one of the many ways that homeowners can be taken to the cleaners as part of the great real estate scam that modern America has become. He also links to another rundown on the scheme by Willamette Week.
Mike doesn't tackle this directly, but his story reminds me of perhaps the hardest things I see in my practice -- people who don't come see a lawyer even when they're in the middle of the fight of their lives and they're facing battalions of lawyers on the other side, and who had a fixable problem -- before they started trying to take care of it themselves without an attorney. I know it might sound self-serving but I don't mean it that way - I am plenty busy and not trying to drum up business. But I just want you to know: if you are falling behind on your mortgage or getting screwy statements that suggest your mortgage servicer isn't crediting your payments properly, or you have received ANY letters from ANYONE suggesting your home loan could be in default, you need to find a lawyer to help you understand what's going on, and what will happen. Not a notario, not a friend of a friend who went to law school but doesn't practice, not a paralegal, but a real, licensed attorney who does foreclosure defense (like Mike, for example). Sure, there are books you can find discussed on Internet Law School about how the brave lone homeowner successfully ran off the criminal gang of bank thieves, but generally, what happens in those situations (where the homeowner tries to DIY their own mortgage defense) is that they wind up as roadkill on the foreclosure freeway with the lender happy as a clam that the homeowner didn't bring in a real attorney and slow down the foreclosure machine. Sometimes it's even worse: the poor homeowner starts the DIY thing, lets a bunch of deadlines pass, and then finally realizes that they are over their head and the DIY thing isn't working and comes to see an attorney -- too late. Even if you think you can only afford a single consult, make it the FIRST thing you do, AS SOON AS you get that very first letter from someone telling you that your home might be foreclosed. The New York Times has an article today on interstate moving: Hire Interstate Movers Without Getting Scammed The writer uncritically recommends checking out your mover on the Better Business Bureau site, which is not that helpful in reality. Far better to consult with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration website AND also the attorney general's complaint hotline in your own state and in the home state for the carriers (note the plural) you are considering. For example, you can search for moving company' complaints reported to the Oregon AG on her website. NEVER rely just on a BBB check or just on the moving company's own website or its claims about testimonials from past customers. Here's an old post from this blog that I think still holds up pretty well:Planning an interstate move? Read this before you contact ANY moving companies. Here's the best tip from the NY Times article:
The internet is full of wonders, but it's also full of dangers -- especially the one most people don't think about: every criminal in the world able to access a computer might as well be right next door to you, because on the internet they are as close to you as your local scam artists and hustlers.
The photo below is of an email that was sent as a "spear phishing" attack -- where the con artist gets the gullible target (the mark) to click a link that downloads malware onto your computer. This is a pretty sophisticated version. It was good enough that there was a chance that it was just a clueless sender who didn't realize how suspicious his email looked -- so I sent him the response asking for further information. No response to my query, so I feel pretty safe in asserting that the original email is an attempt to hook me with malware. Be careful out there folks. If you are not expecting an attachment, don't click on it until you confirm that it's legit, and be very cautious about declaring anything legit from someone sending you something out of the blue. Remember, money never calls you on the phone, and it never magically appears in your email inbox either. This should be simple: Illegal contracts are illegal contracts and are void from the start (“ab initio” in legal lingo). But thanks to the decades-long effort by corporations to populate the Supreme Court with justices who will give corporations equal rights as full citizens, courts now have to wrestle with whether a predatory business entity like this loan-shark lender can trick an elderly veteran out of his 7th Amendment constitutional right to have his day in court or not. So while their consumer customers are fully on the hook when they screw up, the investors in this predatory company get to hide behind the corporate shield so that their yachts, BMWs, and off-shore assets are protected from liability for the company’s wrongdoing — and, on top of that, the pro-corporate activist justices have wildly expanded the reach of the Federal Arbitration Act far beyond the bounds that Congress intended, giving this loan-shark company a good chance of keeping this elderly vet from having his constitutional rights. For more: Oregon veteran may lose access to local courthouse Michael Fuller | May 1, 2018 With the sharply increasing inequality in this country and a Congress seemingly hell-bent on making the situation even more extreme, for many of us among "the 99%" a good bit of estate planning these days isn't about passing stuff on after you die.
For a lot of us, estate planning these days has become about knowing what to pay and how to pay it (which source of funds) to minimize the chance of passing on any debt or impoverishing those left behind. Lifehacker has a good, plain-English article that introduces the ideas. https://twocents.lifehacker.com/what-happens-to-your-debts-when-you-die-1825725750 This is a California case but everything about this case is the same in Oregon -- there are a handful of consumer attorneys in Oregon who focus most or even all of their practice on helping consumers cheated by car dealers.
If you have been cheated by a car dealer, learn from this guy who says "Don't give up your rights!" and was rewarded with a buyback of the crap car and $170,000 of punitive damages, attorney fees, and costs on top. (The dealer initially offered a deal that would have the consumer owing $15,000 on a car he didn't have any longer.) Most autofraud cases like this are handled on a contingency fee basis (like this one was), with the attorney fees coming from the dealership at the end of the case, meaning the consumer has to put very little money into the case. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/on-air/as-seen-on/Car-Dealership-Ordered-to-Pay-Up_Los-Angeles-481444161.html A friend sent me a letter asking me to add my voice to a call to his employer to divest some of its funds from Wells Fargo bank. Not only am I glad to support the call, I felt more people should know just how reprehensible this institution has become. Excerpts from the letter: Wells Fargo’s troubling practices
Washington Post personal finance author Michelle Singletary nails it in calling co-signing someone else's student loan "the worst mistake a grandparent can make." She explains why: When you co-sign for a student loan, you are not the backup borrower. You are on the line for the entire loan balance should your grandchild not pay. What "Spearfishing" looks like -- how hackers get you to give them your passwords and logins1/8/2018 Note the ways to tell this is phony -- the "Noreply" email is misspelled, and the "simply call us at" phone number is bogus.
The most important tip, though, is to ALWAYS look at the sender id: norply@vweb10.nitrado.net is NOT Netflix. Legit businesses do NOT send this kind of thing. If you were to click on those links, you'd be taken to a very convincing phony website that would collect your attempts to log in, which would capture your actual netflix login and username. It helps that I don't have a Netflix account, but it's important to recognize all spearfishing attacks. Got this postcard the other day, and suspect that they are hitting a lot of people in Salem.
This is NOT how you find a reputable contractor. The free meal for listening to their pitch is the trick at the heart of all scams. It gives the target (known as "the mark") something "free" to win the mark's confidence and trust (that's the origin of term "con game" -- con is short for confidence). There is a huge amount of research that shows that humans are hardwired to feel more positively about people who give them a gift and to respond reciprocally, even when you know that the gift is motivated by the giver's self-interest only. That's why drug companies lavish free meals and small gifts on physicians -- even little worthless pens engender this positive gratitude response in the prescribing physician and cause physicians to write more prescriptions for the drug salesman's products. So even though you, at some level, know that this is a come-on and that this company is NOT in the business of giving away free dinners (and that the cost of all those free dinners is rolled into the prices of whatever they're selling), it's basic human nature to let your guard down somewhat when you are enjoying a nice meal that you don't pay for at that moment. You feel more trust in the person giving the pitch. If you're human, you can't help it. So what happens is they get people to come to the dinner, and you maybe enjoy some wine or a few beers and you find yourself getting a pitch for some contracting work (home energy systems in this case) -- and there are a lot of people who seem really excited to sign up! They're people just like you (it seems) and they all seem really enthusiastic. And the people putting on the show are just as nice as can be ... And before you know it, you have signed a contract -- for a time share or a home improvement or whatever. They told you that these great prices were only available for those attending tonight's event, and they seemed like they were really discounted. You don't stop to realize that you have never met most of the other people (if any) and that they may actually be working for the company who puts on the dinner (these are called "shills" -- they are there to help fool the marks and convince the marks that it's a good deal that they should get in on). "Geena R." is a shill -- you have no idea if she even exists or if she is just a stock photo. But putting a picture of a smiling person on the postcard increases response rates for the promotion. Note the text tries to create a sense of urgency "Our dinners fill up quickly." Note that "One of North America's Top Solar Contractors" is a completely unverifiable claim. Nor does it explain why a "top" contractor will create an "engineered solar design" for free for people who are supposedly just there to "enjoy a free meal for two in a fun and relaxed atmosphere." Worse, this company's mailer comes from Glendale, California, and it claims to be from "your local solar and home improvement experts" -- which is odd, because it's a Washington-based company out of Olympia ... hardly "local" for those of us in Salem who received it. Most people getting this won't know how to find the company's Oregon registration so that its consumer complaint history can be checked. The company, which has been registered as a foreign business corporation in Oregon since November 2012, has 16 complaints with the Washington Attorney General's consumer complaints database since May 2013 according to the person who spoke with me today from the WA AG's office. Oddly, the Washington State data repository only shows 14 of them -- so two may be so recent that they haven't been archived in the database yet. You'd definitely want to investigate and read those consumer complaints before doing business with them. You can get them by making a public records request on the Washington AG's office. Out of state contractors are especially difficult for consumers to deal with if something goes wrong. If you are interested in energy upgrades or solar energy systems for your house, you really should start at EnergyTrust.org -- that's a public service nonprofit Oregonians already pay for through our utility bills. Energy Trust is independent and doesn't sell anything. Talk to Energy Trust and get an evaluation of your situation before you talk to an energy contractor; if you have good prospects for saving or generating renewable energy at your property or home, Energy Trust will tell you that. If you would be wasting your money, Energy Trust will tell you that - and contractors won't always. Another interesting thing about this come-on pitch below is that Oregon's Residential Energy Tax Credits just expired -- meaning that these systems just got a lot more costly for Oregon homeowners to buy. A good rule of life is to never accept a "free" meal from a corporate stranger. It generally only ends in tears and debt, and sometimes in the loss of your home (when they convince you to refinance the home to pay for the "improvements"). In yet another move to insulate companies that screw consumers, Congress has now made it so you can't deduct the attorney fees you get from the violating business from your taxes -- fees you only get if you prove that the business violated the law, or if the business settles with you because it realizes that you're about to prove it. This is bad stuff folks. As one analyst described it: Section 11045 of the new law eliminates the miscellaneous itemized deduction for attorneys fees altogether. Until now, consumer plaintiffs could treat their attorneys fees as a deductible expense for the production of income under section 212, subject to the 2% floor. Section 212 is dead until 2026, when section 11045 sunsets. High-quality, honest, reputable businesses are the ones who will suffer from this the most -- each consumer only tends to get ripped off by the scummy businesses once, but their competitors face unfair competition day-in and day-out, 365 days a year.
Most consumer protection laws got their start when businesses realized that "anything goes" in the consumer marketplace doesn't just hurt consumers -- it hurts the other businesses even more. This Congress has absorbed so much propaganda from the banks and business lobbies that they are willing to shoot their own constituents rather than displease their campaign financiers. Disgusting. |
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John Gear Law Office LLC and Salem Consumer Law. John Gear Law Office is in Suite 208B of the Security Building in downtown Salem at 161 High St. SE. That is right across High Street from the Elsinore Theater, a half-block south of Marion County Courthouse.
John Gear is only licensed to practice law in Oregon. This site may be considered advertising under Oregon State Bar rules. There is no legal advice on this site so do not take anything you read here as advice for your particular problem or situation. And I do not represent you and I am not your attorney unless you have hired me with a representation agreement. While I do want you to consider me when you seek an attorney, you should not hire any attorney based on brochures, websites, advertising, or other promotional materials. All original content on this site is Copyright John Gear, 2010-2022. |