We Were Swindled

A few years ago DH and I had quite a bit of credit card debt. We were fine, making our payments but I wanted to be smart about it. I wanted to consolidate them and pay them off BEFORE we had trouble making payments. I didn't anticipate having trouble but we kept using them whenever we had an emergency (like car repair, leaky roof, etc). I couldn't make our credit card payments and save too so I was looking for some expert advice. I picked the wrong place, Ameridebt. The long and the short of it is they were crooks. They had us pay them one lump payment and they were supposed to pay our credit cards but they didn't pay our credit cards. We gave them $1,200 before we found out that we were delinquent on all of our 3 cards! We called Ameridebt, we emailed them, we tried to get in touch any way we knew how but they had vanished.

So we borrowed some money against our mortgage and "fixed" our situation. Thankfully we had options, I'm sure many people that Ameridebt ripped off had no options. Like I said this was a few years ago, maybe 2005? Anyway, there was a class action lawsuit filed and just today I got our "settlement". For the $1,200 we gave these crooks plus the late fees we racked up, and all the problems it caused us we got a measly $61.08. I'm so frustrated right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I also went to the link about the lawsuit and found out that the main defendant behind Ameridebt, Andris Pukke (no kidding that's his real name), was ordered to pay $35 million dollars but refused. He spent some time in jail and then finally paid some money but not the $35 million. I wonder how much we would have gotten back if Mr. Pukke had paid what the courts ordered him too. http://www.polacsekclass.com/

I'm going to have to pray for the ability to forgive Mr. Pukke because right now I'm feeling pretty mad and unforgiving. I will be meditating on Matthew 6:14-15. "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."