22
May
The Meat Grinder
When the debt-collection machine comes for its pound of flesh
On the 38th floor of a Minneapolis skyscraper, Spokane attorney Kirk Miller begins to interview a so-called “robo-signer.”
Miller, a young, tireless consumer law attorney, is after information about the robo-signer’s work at Midland Credit Management, an arm of Encore Capital. Every year, Encore buys billions of dollars in credit-card debts and then sets out to collect — filing hundreds of thousands of lawsuits against the debtors.
That’s where robo-signers, like the one Miller is deposing, come in.
The woman tells Miller she was