In a financial version of some horror movie,
debt
s that were remitted by the courts of bankruptcy are suddenly returning back to life to torture customers. Adding oil to the fire in these stories is an uninviting industry where creditors devouringly buy and sell apparently repaid
debt
s.
Sometimes written off
debt
s may recover viability that is shown up by the case of Van Rathavongsa. The factory worker from Raleigh (N.C.) escaped paying off a huge amount of money with the help of an insolvency procedure that ended up in 2002. Among his
debt
s the judge wrote off or “liquidated” was the one $9,523 Rathavongsa was in
debt
ed to Capital One Financial, the large credit-card company. But the company went on to inform credit bureaus of Rathavongsa’s liquidated
debt
as a current balance in accordance with papers registered and stored in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Raleigh.
Consumer advocates and court-employed bankruptcy trustees claim that this sort of negligence for lenders to correct credit references occasionally occurs. And it may lead to undesirable results: In September, 2003 Rathavongsa wanted to take out a $274,650 mortgage for a new house but his supposed creditor Wachovia demanded that he would either have to pay Capital One or give him evidence from the credit-card company that his
debt
has been liquidated. His lawyer made several calls and sent a letter to Capital One but nevertheless the company never corrected the credit reference. To receive the mortgage Rathavongsa in the end did the same as a lot of people in this case do. He surrendered and gave Capital One $9,523 though he didn’t owe them legitimately.