Freelance Unlicensed Debt Collector Does a Terrible Job

Here’s where freelancing as an unlicensed debt collector not associated with a legitimate agency can get you into some legal trouble — at the very least:

From the Pekin, Illinois, news site PekinTimes.com: “The distance between an ear and a skull determined whether Timothy Johnson was to be charged Friday with wounding or potentially killing a man he allegedly shot to enforce a debt collection.”

The story goes a little something like this.

Curtis Popejoy loaned Scott Lorentzen $1,500. That was maybe the first of many poor choices Popejoy made in this particular transaction, since Lorentzen allegedly ignored several requests to pay back the grand and a half. Popejoy, clearly not up on his FDCPA — or, I guess, any law, really, sent Timothy Johnson to be the muscle/gun behind the collection attempt. And then, as was revealed in that quote up top, Johnson shot Lorentzen in the ear and they’re all in jail.

Another important fact: the average age of all participants is 22.