Last November, the Federal Trade Commission and other law enforcement authorities around the country announced Operation Collection Protection – the first coordinated federal-state initiative to target deceptive and abusive debt collection practices. This concerted and cooperative effort has focused more attention on licensing requirements for collection companies.
As a part of this announcement, the FTC compiled and presented a listing of state and local actions that had been brought against collection entities in the previous year. Many of these actions were the result of unlicensed collection activities. In addition to the fines and penalties levied by the state agencies, these actions exposed the collection companies and their clients to potential repayment of all revenues collected during the time that the unlicensed collection activities were conducted.
