Bad Paper: Chasing Debt From Wall Street to the Underworld Read online

  Using a software system that Brandon himself had developed, he could program the office’s auto-dialer to call only certain debtors whom he had classified. One day, I watched as the auto-dialer called Broken Promises, Broken Payments, Bounces, and Call Backs. The system was configured so that as soon as the debtor picked up, the call was routed to a collector. Brandon sat at his desk quietly, listening as his collectors worked the phones. Sitting nearby was Jason, the collector who had gone to jail for accidentally shooting his gun on a public bus. Jason was on the phone with an elderly debtor named Patsy who was a Stall. Brandon shook his head irritably, saying he didn’t like how “snotty” Jason was being with her. He then walked over to Jason’s desk, took the phone from him, and introduced himself to Patsy, explaining that he was the office manager.

  “I’d love to tell you to forget the whole thing, Patsy,” said Brandon. “I have a mother, I have a grandmother, but I can’t do that. Unfortunately, it’s in your name, it’s under your social, and the balance is due. I could give you a settlement, I could work out some kind of hardship plan with you.”

  “Sir,” said Patsy. “I get social security and that’s it.”

  “Right,” said Brandon.

  “I barely get enough to live on,” added Patsy.

  “Right, well, I understand times are hard, ma’am,” said Brandon. “There are a lot of people in that situation.”

  Patsy then claimed that she did not recognize the loan, which—according to Brandon’s computer records—originated from “Republic Bank & Trust.” “I’ve never had anything to do with the Republic Bank,” said Patsy. After reviewing the information on Jason’s computer screen, Brandon himself wasn’t certain what type of loan this was. “Unfortunately, ma’am, this could be a payday loan for all I know, but I don’t have an option where I can tell you to forget the whole thing.”

  “Sir, I can’t do anything,” said Patsy. “I have ten dollars to my name. Well, I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.” Then she hung up—a move that, ostensibly, transformed her from a Stall to a DHU—which, needless to say, was a downgrade from Brandon’s perspective.

  Despite countless exchanges like this one, which proved ultimately fruitless, it was Brandon’s belief—as a matter of practicality—that it made sense to be civil to debtors. “Most people want to pay their bills,” he said. “If you talk to them like a normal human being, it works. It is a big misconception that people don’t want to pay. When the debtors do the screaming, and the ducking out, and the complaining, it’s just them lashing out because they can’t pay. The public thinks no one wants to pay. But the truth is, people lash out when they can’t pay. If you called people up and they had ten grand in the bank, they would pay instantly.”

  Most of Brandon’s collectors appeared to be won over by the merits of this argument. They strove for empathy—trying to “marry the debtor,” as one of them put it—simply because it was lucrative. Brandon was a master at this. One day, I listened in while he tried to collect on an old, unpaid cell-phone bill with a face value of $401. “I’m gonna need a call back no later than Friday at five p.m. Eastern Standard Time, if you have any intentions at all of handling this thing voluntarily,” he told the debtor. Brandon went on to say that, if the man didn’t pay by the end of the month, there would be added fees and costs and the bill might be much higher. “So by all means, verify it [the bill], but I need to set up a payment arrangement to clear up your good name.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll get my lawyer involved,” replied the debtor.

  “If you want to get a lawyer involved about a three-hundred-dollar bill…”

  “No, no, no,” said the debtor. “You don’t understand.”

  “You go ahead, sir,” said Brandon patiently.

  The debtor went on to claim that he was the victim of identity fraud and he suspected that his ex-wife was running up bills in his name.

  “You know, that happens a lot,” said Brandon sympathetically. “Hey, and if you want to contact your ex and tell her that you found another fraud that she did, and tell her to pay us [the money] before you go and make a report of identity theft to the police, that’d be fine.” He added quickly, however, that ultimately this bill was in his name. “I’m trying to help your credit,” said Brandon. “Whether she did it or not, it’s affecting you.”

  “Hey, man, I ended up in the hospital for six months,” replied the debtor. “I got shot. She shot my ass all over. So it ain’t no big deal, I understand.”

  “She ain’t no good, huh?” said Brandon.

  “Oh, she’s a drug dealer,” said the debtor. “Drug lord. I got involved with the wrong woman.” He added that he had even “ended up in jail because of her.”

  Brandon seemed genuinely fascinated by the possibility that the man’s ex was a “drug lord” and, at one point in the conversation, he asked what kind of drugs she was caught selling.

  “Ice,” replied the debtor.

  “Ice,” said Brandon. “A lot of ice or petty ice jobs?”

  “Five keys [kilos].”

  “Five keys of ice,” said Brandon, impressed. “Do you have any police reports saying that she perpetrated fraud against you in the past?”

  The debtor said that he wanted to check with his lawyer about this.

  And then Brandon again began making his pitch. “In a perfect world, what could I do for you?” he asked.

  “In a perfect world there’s nothing I can do, man—no perfect way out of here,” replied the debtor. The debtor then suggested that he would talk with his lawyer and call Brandon back. Brandon ignored the suggestion and, instead, asked the man about his time in jail. “There might be special programs that I can do as far as helping you out,” said Brandon. “When did you go to prison?”

  “I was stuck in county for her,” said the debtor.

  Brandon asked a few more probing questions, then he remarked, ever so casually, “Well, you know what, if you can prove that you have some kind of ulterior struggles, I might be able to get this settlement down to one hundred twenty bucks or maybe even a ten-dollars-a-month hardship plan.”

  In the end, Brandon was unable to persuade the man to make a payment, but he had come close—in no small part because he had successfully “married” the debtor and then offered him a “special” deal based on the debtor’s unique life circumstances. It was an impressive “talk-off,” as they call it in the business.

  Some of Brandon’s collectors shared his gift, a mix of volubility, pathos, and cunning; others, however, seemed helplessly clumsy or standoffish on the phones. On one of my visits, the collectors were ribbing a guy named Zach, a former welder, who had the distinction of being the month’s worst collector. “I sound like a snarky dickhead on the phone,” Zach admitted to me glumly, as if he were describing a congenital condition. “It’s just something about the way I speak that elicits a very negative reaction in most people.”

  As the day wore on, several of Brandon’s collectors began clamoring for me to get on the phones and try collecting a debt. I resisted, both because I preferred to watch from afar and—quite honestly—I wasn’t too enthused about the prospect of hounding poor people over the telephone. “It’s the only way you’ll really understand what it’s like,” one of them told me. “We will give you a pseudonym, like Mark Twain,” said Brandon. “Everybody here starts as Teddy Green. The real Teddy Green was a Bruins player from the seventies.” Reluctantly, I agreed.

  After assenting to a confidentiality agreement—saying I would not disclose the full names, social security numbers, addresses, or account numbers of any debtors—I began training with Jason and then got to work. I sat down at a computer, put on a headset, and logged on to the computer system. Instantly, the auto-dialer was sending calls my way. There was a beep, a detailed electronic record would flash onto my computer screen, and then I’d hear a debtor saying, “Hello?” On one of my first calls, I connected with a woman who owed several hundred dollars on an old cell-phone bill.


  “I’m calling because I’m trying to follow up on a loan that we had on record for you guys and I’m wondering whether there’s any way we can set up a payment plan for you,” I told her. As soon as I said this, I cringed. I knew instinctively that this opening gambit was weak. I wouldn’t pay me, if I were the debtor. I tried to recover: “The balance was at 1,441 dollars, which I know is a lot, there’s a bunch of fees and interest, but we’re able to…” At this point, Brandon, who was listening to me, whispered, “Nine hundred dollars.” “Offer you a settlement of nine hundred bucks, which is about five hundred less than the balance.”

  “I’m not working right now,” the debtor told me.

  I asked her how long she had been unemployed, working hard to keep my tone measured and sympathetic, doing my best to “marry her”—a notion that now seemed rather absurd. “We talk to a lot of folks who are in kind of a similar spot,” I told her. “One thing that we can work out is a hardship payment plan, where it’s just fifty dollars a month.” At one point, the woman told me that she could probably pay me on the fifteenth of the month, but mentioned that she didn’t have a credit card to make the payment. We spoke for a few more minutes until, rather abruptly, she hung up on me.

  Brandon, who was standing directly behind me—and seemed to be enjoying his role as my coach—immediately commenced with the postgame commentary. “You should have given her our address and made her promise to send the check on the fifteenth,” he said, shaking his head. “Then, when she didn’t pay, she would be a Broken Promise. When you call her back, you say: ‘You promised to pay and you didn’t.’ Then you’re not talking about if they owe the money, you’re talking about her making good on what she promised.” My mistake wasn’t in failing to collect, it was that I had failed to upgrade her to a better class of debtor.

  Moments later the phone ran again and I was speaking with another woman, who owed a balance of several thousand dollars on her credit card. I suggested that we work out a payment plan. “I’m not going to be able to do any of this,” she told me. “I was just answering out of, uh, what would you call it? You know, good manners.”

  “I really appreciate it,” I told her.

  “I’m not a deadbeat—it kind of sounds like I am—but I just got ill, and that was a long time ago, and I’m barely staying afloat. You know, the more I can do for myself and not cost the state money[, the better]. That’s where I’m at.” I asked her what kind of illness she had. She explained that she was bipolar. “It changed my entire situation and my life, I mean the financial part,” she explained. “I wasn’t able to pay bills and then I had no credit.” She told me that she had managed her condition “pretty well,” but added, “I know that I’m getting close to losing it, which would mean going to a hospital and, you know, a recovery period.” As she spoke, her voice sounded shaky. I wanted to hang up the phone, but I forced myself to press on.

  “Is there any way that you could even set up even a modest payment to help pay this off?” I asked.

  “No, no,” said the woman. “Are you not hearing me?” Then she hung up.

  I looked back sheepishly at Brandon, who was still standing directly behind me.

  “You know what you should have said?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  “You should have said: ‘I understand that these are tough times, and you have been through some hardships, but I got ninety-year-old ladies on oxygen who are sending twenty-five dollars a month, as a show of good faith, so certainly there is something you can do to start paying off this debt.’”

  I nodded my head, sighed, and looked up at the clock. There were still a few minutes left before all of the collectors in the office got a fifteen-minute cigarette break, and—as far as I was concerned—that break couldn’t come soon enough. I was a terrible collector. There was no doubt about it. I lacked Brandon’s easy rapport with the debtors and his innate sense of when to segue from courtship back to the unpleasant matter of collecting. Most of all, I lacked something more fundamental, something more visceral: I lacked the drive and the hunger to make my commission. But this, I realized, was largely a matter of life circumstances. I was a comfortable upper-middle-class guy with a house, two cars, and a wife who was a doctor. I knew that if circumstances were different, if I were poorer and worried about my family—like so many debt collectors—then somehow or another I would find a way to collect.

  * * *

  Brandon wasn’t kidding when he told me that he employed virtually every single person in his family. One day in Maine, I wandered into the basement and encountered an elderly woman making cheesesteak sandwiches on an electric griddle. This was Darlene, the agency’s official cook and Brandon’s mother. “You can call me Ma Barker,” she told me, in a heavy Boston accent. She wore jeans and a T-shirt.

  “Why Ma Barker?” I asked.

  “Ma Barker was this woman in the 1920s who had her sons rob banks for her—but then she kept all the money,” she said with a laugh. “Truth is, I always tried to keep my boys out of trouble, but it never worked.”

  Brandon eventually joined our conversation and told me that, despite everything he had gone through—all the arrests, lockups, and hardships—he never doubted his own self-worth, in part (surprisingly enough) because of his lineage. “I am related to John Quincy Adams,” he told me. Brandon has traced his Irish lineage back to his great-grandfather, a vaudeville actor from Cork whose name—oddly enough—was Major English.

  Darlene, who was still sitting nearby, chimed in: “We are also related to John Thompson of Thompson Island in Boston Harbor.”

  “That is why we have some Indian blood,” Brandon said.

  “Thompson or some other relative was kidnapped in the war of 1812 or the French and Indian War,” Darlene explained, “and he brought back a squaw. And that is where the Indian blood came from.”

  “Who knows who was fucking who back in the toolsheds in the 1800s,” added Brandon. “They can write whatever they want on paper.”

  Family lineage only did so much, Brandon concluded. After that it was his common sense—and his street sense—that enabled him to survive.

  “I learned all my kicks and punches in dancing school,” he told us.

  “Dancing school?” I said incredulously. “You?”

  “He wasn’t afraid to try things,” said Darlene.

  “I went to the school, and for the recital we did the ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ song. You remember that one?”

  “He had a lot of confidence. He wasn’t afraid of dancing.”

  “Years later, I used those moves to beat people up.”

  “That’s not why I sent him to dancing school.”

  “It was three gay ten-year-olds, me, and a bunch of chicks.”

  “They were all there to control their weight,” said Darlene.

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “I used to worry about you.”

  “Do you still worry, Ma?”

  “I have two dead kids. You could die of a heart attack any day because you eat too much bacon. You can’t call life. Life calls you.”

  “Do you ever feel bad for what you put your mom through?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Brandon. “But I feel bad for what life put me through. This collections gig has been my salvation. When I was younger someone told me, ‘Put on a suit and you can rob anybody.’ Truth is, I haven’t changed much, but many people respect me now, because I have a business and property and look respectable. Now that I have these trappings, they treat me with respect. If you can pay the right lawyer or have the right look, you are respectable. If you walk in with a ripped shirt and a public defender, you are an animal.”

  Respectable or not, Brandon’s shop generated complaints. Just a week before my initial visit, a debtor told the Better Business Bureau that one of Brandon’s collectors had threatened to inform his employer about his debt and then taunted him, saying, “When are you going to step up and start being a man about this?” There was another complain
t, filed that same week, from a debtor who claimed that another of Brandon’s collectors had been “calling family members of mine and hinting that I would be in serious legal trouble if this bill wasn’t paid off.” In both cases, Brandon’s agency wrote a reply explaining, “we take all complaints seriously” and “we have closed the account based on your complaint.” In both instances, the Better Business Bureau noted that the disputes appeared to have been resolved.

  Of these two complaints, the one involving the threat of a lawsuit was the more serious because the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act prohibits nonlawyers from making such threats. According to Aaron’s deputy, Lilly, a number of Brandon’s collectors had made such threats in the past. The collectors used a “legal talk-off,” said Lilly, which falsely led debtors to believe that they might end up in court—or worse—if they didn’t pay up. Aaron tolerated this behavior, said Lilly, because Brandon’s collectors were so effective in collecting on his paper. Aaron disputes this, maintaining that he was sued on only a few occasions because of conduct at Brandon’s agency—which is inevitable—and that he wouldn’t have tolerated more suits simply because it would have been too costly.