Possible Smoking Gun in DA vs. Collection Lawyer Case

by Mike Bevel, CollectionIndustry.com

There?s more in the continuing saga from yesterday?s story on Araphoe County, Colorado, District Attorney Carol Chambers and her did she/didn?t she threat of a debt collection attorney.

The story so far is this: debt collection attorney for Central Credit Corp. Jonathan Steiner alleges that he was threatened by Chambers with a grand jury investigation when he tried to recoup some bad check funds from Englewood City Councilwoman Laurett Barrentine, a member of Arapahoe County’s Republican Party. Barrentine claims that the bad checks were a result of identity theft, and that she is not responsible for the $320 dispute. Central Credit Corp. dropped the collection account against Barrentine ? primarily from threats of the aforementioned grand jury investigation.

Chambers has said that the phone call was not a threat when she mentioned a ?grand jury investigation.?

Barrentine is now claiming that it was her terrier-like tenacity and not the intervention of Chambers that got a collection agency to drop a lawsuit against her.

If that is the case, however, it doesn?t explain the email that Barrentine sent to Chambers after Central Credit Corp. dropped the collection suit: ?It’s all about you!!! Thank you!”

Steiner said in the complaint he filed in June that the collection agency decided to settle the case and pay Barrentine $220 in court costs after Chambers and her husband became involved on her behalf.

But Chambers and her husband have said Central Credit had a weak case.

Barrentine, also an Arapahoe County Republican Party official, testified she is not friends with Chambers, although she has met her at political functions.

In the voice mail left Steiner, Chambers said she was looking into convening a grand jury to investigate collection agencies and their attorneys and that “we are getting a lot of complaints from victims of identity theft that you are pressuring them, shall I say, to pay on checks that they did not write . . .”

According to the Colorado Rocky Mountain News, Barrentine smiled when one of Chambers’ defense attorney’s asked her whether she’d made that statement. “It would never occur to me to rely on anybody else to get something done,” Barrentine said. That still doesn?t address the troubling ?It?s all about you!!!? with it?s unnecessarily multiplied exclamation points.

If found guilty of professional misconduct, Chambers could face discipline ranging from a reprimand to disbarment. The judge cannot remove her from her office but if she is disbared she could lose her job as Arapahoe County’s district attorney.