Guilty Plea Entered in California Debt Collection Scam Case
A U.S. Attorney in California announced Friday that a man arrested in connection with a large debt collection scam has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud.
Darrian Jeffrey Summers (photo from CA Deparment of Corrections via BakersfieldNow.com)
According to the plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Fresno, Darrian Jeffrey Summers of Taft, Calif., was a salesman for Maxwell, Turner and Associates Inc. (MTA) in Bakersfield, a company that purported to be a debt collection agency. When MTA collected money from debtors, they would not send the money to their clients. MTA would also tell clients that additional fees were needed to advance the litigation process, although no litigation was actually taking place.
Summers admitted that the losses to clients ranged from $1.6 million to $1.7 million.
Summers agreed to forfeit any claim he had to $919,419 in cash seized in December 2010 when he was arrested. He is scheduled to appear in late August for sentencing, where he faces as much as 20 years in jail and fines of up to $250,000.
The case was brought as a result of an ongoing investigation between the IRS, Bakersfield Police Department, and the Kern County District Attorney’s Office.
Before the raid in December of last year, Maxwell, Turner and Associates had issued several press releases to ARM industry press — including insideARM.com — announcing, among other things, an entry into debt buying and the launch of a new Web site. The company’s Web site is now defunct and the company remains unreachable.
Well, there are tons of scams on debt collection, and the number is growing. Apparently, Apple released an iPhone app a couple of days ago called Scam Detector. According to them, the app exposes in detail over 350 of the most popular scams in the world. It might be worth checking it out, if you have an iPhone…
Not the first–or the last– time folks have used InsideARM for their own net gain—including some who apparently are for others who have written “a blank check made payable to the United States of America for an amount of “up to and including (their) life.”” When someone preaches about a cause or organization they weren’t involved with initially or volunteered for, while wrapping a flag around themselves and their talk, you’re more than likely than not dealing with someone who is using InsideARM to make a buck illegally. Hiding out in the open, as it were. It’s happened here and continues to elsewhere. There’s sure more cleaning up to do in your industry instead of the whitewashing taking place by the many making a buck off it, legally and otherwise.
His mug shot has him wearing eyeliner?? When picked up was he masquerading as woman? I’m sure the guys at Kern County Jail have been having a ball with him.
Oh, no, not again^38
@ Bob House:
Several things:
(1) That’s an eyebrow pencil. You’re not allowed to make fun of anyone for his make-up choice until you learn the proper name for things. (It makes you sound foolish.)
(2) There is no one more ballsy, tough, and confident than a man wearing make up. For instance, I doubt you’re tough enough to pull off lip-liner. Stumbling along through life as a male because of a random combination of chromosomes isn’t manly; a dude dressing in drag is a courageous display.
(3) Rape jokes generally aren’t funny. Your rape joke is exactly not funny, mostly because it’s lazy.
It’s not surprising that the scammer was in California. A state that went from a stringent licensing state that even required Qualified Managers (I was one) to a state that anyone can open an agency without a bond or license. While the AG can prosecute Robbins-Rosenthal, I don’t know of anyone that can protect creditors from being ripped of by “agencies”. No disrespect to my friends in California who run legitimate agencies but its thew Wild West for thieves like this guy.