Hearing Set

Have a hearing set at the Van Nuys courthouse on June 8th to start to undo what Winn and Sims did.

Cavalry Investments LLC

After seeing their name all over the court documents, I was wondering who they are exactly (they don't sound like a credit card company in my opinion).

I could be totally wrong, but as far as I can tell they look like they buy large quantities of bad debt from credit card companies as a whole.

The financial business world is fascinating, isn't it? hehe (just kidding)

BTW, I don't like the word Cavalry, I always want to spell it as Calvary for some reason...

Building

I was bored, so I poked around a little bit. Winn and Sims' offices are in a pretty cool historical building...

This is what it looks like now:



And "back in the day":

Six Month Window

Since the judgment was entered on October 29, apparently I only have 2 weeks to do anything about it (there is a 6 month time frame). Which if you ask me is incredibly lame because if they choose to snag my money a month from now, I would have been completely out of luck, even though I knew nothing about it.

Now They Have My Correct Address

Called Juan this morning and gave him my right address (since they never had it to begin with). That way they actually know where to send my money back to.

Allegedly Unethical Firm

Hey look, I'm famous (just kidding of course). Open Directory gave us an entry in Allegedly Unethical Firms which propagates out to the hundreds of sites/directories that use ODP data. For example:

• Winn and Sims link in Google directory
  
• Winn and Sims link in DMOZ
  
• Winn and Sims link in Science Daily
  
• Winn and Sims link in Thumbshots
  
• Winn and Sims link in knowledge.com
  
• Winn and Sims link in Excite UK

Looking It All Over

Ate some salmon for dinner while looking over some of the court documents. Lots of interesting things here:

• Says I was served on June 27, 2003. It also says the person who was served has black hair, blue eyes, is 5' 4" and 160 pounds. That's interesting, because I'm 6'0", no hair (have a clean shaven head since about 6 months before this date), brown eyes and weigh 155 pounds. The person who "served" me (Crystal Jackson from Executive Attorney Services) probably was eating a cheeseburger at the beach instead... Job well done Crystal! {rolls eyes}
  
• Credit card application has my mothers maiden name as something not even remotely correct.
  
• Address, phone number and signature on credit card application is not mine (gee, no wonder I never got a statement). (The only thing that IS right is the name and social security number)
  
• I wasn't even named on the original lawsuit. Somehow half way through it, I got added (plantiff even had to refile court documents because the court had no idea who I was).
  

Off To Los Angeles

Spent six hours in Los Angeles traffic going to the Van Nuys court house to get a copy of everything in the file. Officially you can only get 20 pages without filing a duplication request and coming back another day to pick it up. After a little arguing, they photocopied all documents for me right then and there (I didn't particularly want to drive from San Diego again).

Talked To Juan

So I called the phone number, and it's the law offices of Winn and Sims. Talked to a guy named Juan (who is assigned to my suit). He wasn't terribly helpful (can't blame him, because they probably deal with 100 jack-asses per day who really are guilty). Basically said I needed to get a lawyer to get it straightened out.

Called Bank

Called the bank and they said there was a Marshal Levy against my account, and only had a phone number for it (which they gave me).

Money Missing

Realized $6,878.94 is missing from one of my back accounts. Gee, that's strange, but since it's Saturday, I'll call the bank on Monday.

Background

I got a call from one of their call handlers a few years ago. Telling me I owed $6,000 on some credit card which I never had. It was a MasterCard, and never in my life have I been in possesion of ANY MasterCard, much less one from whatever credit card compay they were representing. Even funnier is the fact it the credit card (and statements) were sent to an address where not only did I never live, I never lived in that county (no wonder I never knew about this credit card I have... hah!). In fact, if I ever was able to actually *see* a copy of a credit card statement (which they were not able to provide), I would bet money that I could show transactions run close to the same time on my real credit card hundreds of miles away. In fact, I'll bet not a single transaction on this fake credit card was run in the county I live in.

I explained to them I never had a MasterCard, and asked to send me a copy of the application. Their response was that I needed to file a police report if it truely was a case of stolen identity.... So I did. I offered to send them a copy, but by that time (because it was 24 hours after the first call from them... hehe), they said it was too late. So I asked them to put me in touch with the issuing credit card company. And of course they couldn't do that either. So whatever, I found their fax number on their website (which is terrible BTW [this site is terrible too, but hey, I spent 5 minutes on it, and it's not a business site]) and faxed them a copy of the police report.

So didn't hear anything back from them, and figured it was done. Okay, fast forward a couple years. I have this one bank account where I keep "play" money in. Somehow they seemed to have gotten a court order to take money out of that account (which was abut $7,000, I assume from interest on my "bad debt"). Not being a lawyer, it seems interesting that you are able to do that without any sort of court hearing or notification. But okay... whatever. :)

So now, it seems I have to hire a lawyer so I can have some of my play money back.

Just to give some background on my credit:

• My "real" credit card is not a piddly $5,000 limit. It's a Visa Signature with no limit
  
• I spend a little over $100,000/year on my Visa (I have lots of sky miles these days)
  
• To date, I have never in my life had a finance charge accrue on any credit card I own (they all are setup to pay off in full at the end of each month)
  
• Big purchases are always cash (real estate and vehicles)
  
• Last time I had my credit report run, the company running it said they had never seen such a perfect credit report (950 out of 950)

Oh well, I can't really blame them, they are just puppets I suppose. But since they are paid on commissions, it might save them some money in the future to *not* assume everyone is guilty. :)