Some advice please?

[darrin]

Hello Group,

My name is Darrin and I have a (to me that is) major problem. Please allow me to explain my predicament. I will try to be as brief as possible here.

First of all I am not currently living in the United States. I left the US in January of 2002. I am a US citizen by birth, and I do maintain a mailing address (parents residence) where I can receive mail.

I left the US in January of 2002 after my credit was well and truly screwed. I gave my credit cards (and heart- what a fool!) to a woman I was certain I would marry. I lost a great job (Schering Plough- its actually listed on one of my credit reports!) because of her and she maxed all my cards. With no job and literally no hope, I went to Korea to escape the harassment of my creditors and to start saving to repay what she charged. I am finally in a position where I can pay some of my total debt back. However, at this point I truly feel like this is a hopeless mess and I feel like I am never going to be able to have good credit again. I have been out of the US for so long. I miss my family, and I want to come back. I just want a chance to start over.

The problem is that it has been so long, and I dont have any records (the ex destroyed every single thing I had in the US) other then my credit reports. I have no issue with my credit reports, they all seem accurate, but I no longer have the account numbers (complete account numbers- the credit reports have only partial numbers) or addresses of the original creditors. In one case I no longer know who holds the debt as the credit report says one account has been sold. Obviously this is a major headache, and being in Korea does not help matters.

Additionally if you were to look at my credit reports you would see that all my credit cards are charge offs. These are all very old accounts- all of them were closed in December of 2001. Yet they show up with "balance dates" as being in 2004!

My total debt is around $15,000.00 (This is from 3 credit cards and some student loans)

I have around $9,000.00 saved (which is very difficult to do here in Seoul).

I have been advised that charge offs can often be settled 50-75% of the original debt. Is this true? How would I go about doing this? I have around 60% of the total owed right now available to me. I just have no idea how to do this. I have read everywhere on the net that even if I pay the charge offs they will not be deleted from my credit report. Obviously thats really bad. I am not looking to escape these debts, I am just looking to pay them (or a portion of them) and then have them deleted from my credit report. can this be done? What is your opinion?

Thanks so much,

[momof5]

Welcome Darrin!

First of all, when you dispute with the CRAs, you can cite creditor name and the partial acct # that is on your bureau. Each bureau maintains the addys of all your creditors... save that information for a bit....

You said that you used your parents address. They should have gotten mail that reflected these accounts. Did they forward that to you?

You obviously have charge-offs. What about collection accounts? With whom? You need to DV these in a 1 - 2 punch.

Do your first round of disputes just to find out what will simply and easily disappear. Then work on the balance.

Next, just because you agree the accounts are yours does not mean that they can prove it. That is why you ask for that first. PROVE you have the right person. Next, the amount they CLAIM you owe may not be right. The DOLA may be wrong, the date of first major delinquency may be wrong. They may have re-aged the account. You need to find out what your actually and truly owe. Don't pay more than you have to just because someone felt like tacking on a bunch of illegal fees!

If you were in that bad a situation, there was really no need for you to run like you did. BK was a far better option. You gave that woman too much power over you as you are giving your creditors power. You need to take that back. Take control of yourself and your life and your destiny.