Three out-of-state lawyers, accused of using unfair tactics to collect debts in Colorado, have been banned from collecting debts for periods ranging from life to three years, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office said today.
Under a consent decree issued late Monday by Denver District Judge Morris Hoffman, lawyer Marvin Brandon is permanently banned from collecting debts in Colorado; lawyer Jack H. Boyajian is banned from collecting debts in Colorado for five years, and lawyer Karen Nations is banned from collecting debts for three years in Colorado.
The consent decree specifically bars the lawyers and their firms from violating Colorado’s debt-collection and consumer-protection laws.
Under the settlement with the lawyers, if Boyajian and Nations want to resume debt collection in Colorado after their bans are up, they must obtain licenses from the state.
The consent decree also requires that Boyajian and the four law firms and one associated firm pay the state $200,000 in costs and fees, though $180,000 of the amount against Boyajian will be suspended if he pays the remaining $20,000 in a timely fashion.
According to the consent decree, among the types of debt the lawyers or their firms attempted to collect were “NSF”, or bad, checks the consumers allegedly wrote to merchants or other people.
The number of Colorado consumers from whom the defendants have collected, or attempted to collect, debts, are “in the thousands,” according to the consent decree.
According to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, many of the bounced checks were outside the statute of limitations and could not be the basis of legal action.
In some cases, said the AG’s office, the defendants added fees in excess of the amounts allowed by law and demanded penalties of up to three times the amount of the bounced check. Such “treble damages” only can be assessed following a successful lawsuit, said the attorney general.
Each of the law firms named in the state’s lawsuit was incorporated in California with principle offices in New Jersey. None of the three lawyers were licensed to practice law in Colorado, according to the AG’s office.
All the law firms and the one associated business are now defunct, according to the Attorney General.
The firms that were sued by Colorado Attorney General John Suthers were JBC & Associates; JBC Legal Group; Boyajian Law Offices; Boyajian & Brandon Legal Group, and Outsource Recovery Management, Inc.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
