JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Could your old debt come back to haunt you? A man who used to live in Duval County said “zombie debt” appeared in his life seemingly out of nowhere.
Justin Purser said a debt of a few thousand dollars from close to 20 years ago had ballooned with interest to more than $11,000 when a debt collector came knocking for the first time in 2021.
An attorney at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid said they see “zombie debt” cases locally every week, and with the pandemic putting other types of debt collection on hold, like for mortgages and student loans, some collectors began resurrecting debt consumers might have thought was dead and buried.
“Honestly, I thought it was a joke,” Purser told the I-TEAM of his reaction to a notice in 2021 of an $11,000 debt from 2004.
“I was never never notified that I had any debt. Like, how is this possible? So I thought it was a joke, but unfortunately, it wasn’t,” he said.
Court records show a judgment against him in 2004 for a debt of about $2,800, and with attorneys’ fees, interest, and other costs, the total came to nearly $4,900.
He said he doesn’t know what the original debt was for.
“It could have been a credit card. It could have been medical,” he said.
The court docket in the case shows he was served about the debt in 2004 at a Jacksonville address, but he said the notice went to his mom’s address from a few years earlier that he’d used to renew his driver’s license.
“My mom was no longer living there,” he said.
By 2004, he was living in the Los Angeles area, where he still lives now.
“I’m a director,” Purser said. “I work in movies and television, and there’s been a writers’ and actors’ strike. So I haven’t really worked in six months...I’m like, ‘am I gonna have to drive Uber Eats this week?’ You know, so it’s been, it’s been really, really tough.”
Earlier this year, more than $800 was garnished from his bank account to go toward the debt.
Records show F.A. Management Solutions, a company registered to South Florida attorney Hugh Shafritz, got the judgment against Purser in 2004. It was that same attorney who came back 17 years later to try to collect the debt that had since more than doubled.
Jacksonville Area Legal Aid attorney Lynn Drysdale said the statute of limitations for a lot of consumer debt is 20 years. She said if you receive a letter about an old debt you owe, don’t ignore it.
She recommended getting advice from an attorney and said there are some protections from garnishments.
But resurrecting zombie debt up to 20 years later is not necessarily illegal.
“I think procedurally, there could be some protections built into Florida law, but that would have to be through the legislature,” Drysdale said.
“I want to really let people, not only in the state of Florida, but across the whole country be aware of zombie debt, because there could be people out there that have it against them,” Purser said
Drysdale said you can look up their name in the court docket online or at a courthouse in counties where you’ve lived to see if there are any judgments that could come back to haunt you.
News4JAX reached out to the attorney trying to collect in Purser’s case, but he did not immediately respond.