But Sunday night, John Oliver might’ve one-upped her. Making the situation worse, debt buyers can continue to chase up money owed even if the statute of limitations has run out on the debt.
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To prove just how little oversight there is in the industry, Oliver set up a debt collection agency called “Central Asset Recovery Professionals”, or CARP, in Mississippi. The collection companies legalling purchase debt packages that are heavily discounted – sometimes for pennies on the dollar.
Oliver then explained how he rather easily set up his own debt-buying company over the Internet and easily purchased $14.9 million in delinquent medical debt from Texas for less than $60,000.
Representatives for HBO did not provide immediate comment about the Debt Collective’s statement.
The $15 million in medical debt was transferred to RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit that forgives medical debt with no tax consequences.
Until we stopped collecting donations past year, we used the $700 thousand we raised to erase over $30 million in predatory medical and tuition debt and more, as well as helping to abolish over $800 million in a class action settlement. Oliver said it was “disturbingly easy” to create the company. He almost doubled the previous record, when Oprah Winfrey gave 276 members of her audience a free vehicle, for a total value of just under $8 million.
We canceled this debt (without any compensation) to get people to think critically about indebtedness.
Instead of choosing to capitalize on the debt portfolio, Oliver chose to immediately forgive the debt “because on one hand it’s obviously the right thing to do but more importantly we’d be staging the largest one-time giveaway in television history”.
The “giveaway” was part of a critique on the debt buying industry.
“We need much fairer rules and tougher oversights from potentially predatory companies like the one we setup”.
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HBO host, Emmy-winning writer, debt forgiver. According to the host, this is the largest one-time giveaway ever on television, beating out Oprah Winfrey’s famous “You get a vehicle!”
