It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) -- When Tobias "Bags of Money" Boyland went looking for a new career after serving 13 years in prison for armed robbery and drug dealing, he quickly found something that suited his sensibilities: He opened a collection agency.
Between 5,000 and 6,000 people earning $30,000 to $40,000 a year now work at roughly 110 collection agencies in and around Buffalo, an industry created with the help of seed money from the state of New York. The industry has been a rare economic bright spot in Buffalo, the nation's third-poorest city of its size, a place where 30 percent of the people live in poverty.
Yet, law enforcement and consumer groups point to a dark side: Buffalo, they say, has also become a center for some of the worst elements in the business. Debt collectors, some of them convicted felons, have illegally posed as lawyers or unlawfully browbeat people -- threatening to have them arrested or stripped of custody of their children -- to scare them into making payments.
Boyland himself was forced out of business and jailed in June after authorities said they caught him carrying a loaded, unlicensed pistol as they investigated more than 1,000 complaints about abusive tactics at his collection business.
Originally posted by conspiracyrus
thats buffalo... people dont usually hear about that place except for its snow... but man they have a terrible murder rate, not to mention organized crime.... past that crackheads will break into your home while your there and rip the copper piping out of your basement. its pretty ridiculous
I hope stuff like this dosent start showing up around my area.