National Collegiate Student Loan Trust - Defending Student Loan Lawsuits

Intro - Hey everybody, John Skiba here. And in this video, I'm going to discuss student loans debt collection lawsuits, specifically, those lawsuits that are brought against people who have private student loans, namely by the National Collegiate Student Loan Trust. But if this is your first time here to my YouTube channel, go ahead and click Subscribe, that way you'll be notified each and every week when I put out a new video that'll help you deal with your serious debt problem. National Collegiate Student Loan Trust All right, let's talk about the National Collegiate Student Loan Trust. If you have a private student loan and it's gone into default and you're getting sued, chances are you're getting sued by the National Collegiate Student Loan Trust. You may have received a letter from them or some paperwork and you're probably wondering, who in the world are these people? I didn't enter into any type of agreement with them. I didn't enter into any kind of a promissory note or agreement to pay, and so the question is, why are they the entity the suing you? If you're being sued by the National Collegiate Student Loan Trust, it's likely because you at some point took out a private student loan, either with JPMorgan Chase, Charter One Bank, Bank of America, RBS Citizens, or the Union Federal Savings Bank. I deal a lot with these in my law practice. And often those are the promissory notes that we see. Those are likely the banks that you took the loan out with. Well, what happens is after you take out a student loan through a series of transactions, the National Collegiate Student Loan Trust is saying that they received these particular accounts and essentially they're alleging they purchased them for pennies on the dollar, and then they sue on them. Their whole goal is to get a default judgment against you so they can start garnishing your wages and taking money out of your account. So in this video, I want to talk about some different strategies you can take if you've been sued by National Collegiate Student Loan Trust. And the reason why this is important, these are different than even our typical junk debt by our cases. Because the original loan was a student loan, these are loans that typically don't go away in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy or even a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. These are debts that you either are going to have to settle, payoff or contest in these types of lawsuits. And so it's important to know these strategies if they've sued you, because bankruptcy is usually not an option in getting rid of these debts. National Collegiate Student Loan Trust Issues Okay, let's talk about some of the issues that pop up in these cases. If the National Collegiate Student Loan Trust is going to defeat you and get a judgment against you in a court proceeding, they've got to prove three things. They've got to prove who the original creditor was and they've got to prove that you had a contract with them. They have got to prove that somehow National Collegiate Student Loan Trust got this particular account. Not just any account, but your account. They've got to prove that. And then third, they've got to show how they calculated the amount owed, show that proper credits were made for payments, that kind of thing. You're thinking, hey, they filed this suit, they probably can prove all three of those things. You would be wrong on that because the National Collegiate Student Loan Trust has a horrible reputation of profiling lawsuits and not being able to prove what it is that they're alleging. So much so that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency, actually has sanctioned them for filing suits that they either couldn't prove or that they couldn't show proof of ownership, and they were running into all kinds of problems. Not only that, when they file lawsuits, they don't have anybody from the National Collegiate Student Loan Trust appear as a witness or to provide testimony. And the reason is there's no employees in the Trust. So they have these professional witnesses that work for a company called Trans Systems World Inc., TSI. National Collegiate Student Loan Trust Documents TSI has also been sanctioned by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And in one of the most damning orders I've seen, they sanctioned them for providing false testimony in live open court proceedings, as well as providing false testimony in written affidavits. These are important to you because these are the witnesses that are going to be trying to establish that you owe likely tens of thousands of dollars to the National Collegiate Student Loan Trust. So let's go over a few of the documents you're likely going to see if you find yourself being sued by National Collegiate Student Loan Trust. Typical documents they have is like this first one here. This is just a general letter with U.S. Bank National Association showing that U.S. Bank is serving as the special servicer for the account, as well as Transworld Systems Inc. Now, one thing you're going to notice here, is you're not going to see your name, you're going to see your account number, you're not going to see anything that's connected to you. And that's a common theme throughout all their documents. They're going to provide you with a big thick stack of documents to try to say, "Hey, we've got all the evidence we need," but when you actually start digging through those documents you'll see there's not a whole lot of information there. Let me show you one of the other documents you're likely going to receive. This is what's called a Pool Supplement Agreement or a Pool Supplement Document. Now, if you look in this document under the purchase and sale a portion of it, it talks about the accounts that are going to be transferred to the various agencies. And the one thing you're going to notice again, is you're not going to see your name, your account number, you're not going to see anything on there that references that your specific account was transferred. If you look down here through about the midway through that paragraph on your purchase and sale agreement, you're going to see that they're claiming that each of the student loans set forth on the attached Schedule 1, those are the documents that are going to be transferred. Let's take a look at Schedule 1. Astounding. (chuckles) There's nothing on there. It says it's on file with FMC. FMC stands for First Marblehead Corporation, who is yet another entity who they're alleging was involved in these various transactions. So when you start getting down into the details of their documents, there's just not a whole lot there. It looks like it is, from a distance it's got that... that you're thinking, "Boy, there's got to be something in all those papers." But when you start digging through the documents you're going to see that there's nothing that really ties the National Collegiate Student Loan Trust to you. And that's what you need to point out to the court if you're fighting in a trial or a motion for summary judgment, that's the problem they have with their case. And when you paint that with the background that they've been sanctioned on multiple occasions, as well as their witnesses, Transworld systems Inc., TSI, you start to see that there's a real problem with these types of cases. And so my recommendation for people who have been sued by National Collegiate is to contest the suit, make National Collegiate prove that your specific account was transferred between the entities. And sometimes actually you do need to get an attorney. I handle these cases in my law practice. These cases can be a little bit more complex than your typical run of the mill debt buyer case. Because there's a lot of documentation and it's actually a confusing roadmap that they try to allege as far as how they got this account. And you really need to be able to get into the details of it to show why it is that there's no proof that your specific account was transferred. Not only that, then you get into damages. Can they prove that a specific dollar amount is owed? Can they show, if payments were made, can they show that they were credited properly? They have difficulty doing that because they don't have anybody from any of the original creditors like Chase, Bank of America, Charter One. You're not going to ever see those witnesses appear and testify in a proceeding like this. So I know that's just kind of the high era view of how to deal with National Collegiate Student Loan Trust lawsuits. But I always say, if you're going to get sued, the silver lining is that to get sued by someone like National Collegiate 'cause their cases are generally a mess. And it's something that definitely you can either get a low settlement on or even win if you do the steps correctly in making them prove their case. I hope that was helpful today. If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please go ahead and do so. Thanks for watching today.