The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (Bureau) announced a settlement with National Credit Adjusters, LLC (NCA), a privately-held company headquartered in Hutchinson, Kansas, and its former CEO and part-owner, Bradley Hochstein.
As described in the consent order, the Bureau found that NCA and Hochstein used a network of debt collection companies to collect consumer debt on NCA’s behalf. Some of those companies engaged in frequent unlawful debt collection acts and practices that harmed consumers, including by representing that consumers owed more than they were legally required to pay, or threatening consumers and their family members with lawsuits, visits from process servers, and arrest, when neither NCA nor the collection companies intended or had the legal authority to take those actions.