Debt buying.

You may never have heard of it but amazingly, debt buying – a scheme in which companies buy old and stale claims from creditors for pennies on the dollar and then file lawsuits against thousands of debtors who may not even remember the debt – is a big and often predatory multi-million-dollar industry.

Several years’ back, North Carolina passed a consumer protection law to guard against some of the industry’s worst excesses, and recently a team of consumer protection attorneys led by the North Carolina Justice Center’s Jason Pikler, secured a sizable settlement on behalf of thousands of consumers against one very large debt buyer known as Portfolio Recovery Associates. And this past week, NC Newsline caught up with Pikler to learn more about debt buying, the settlement, and some basic tips for consumers.