"Between 5,000 and 6,000 people earning $30,000 to $40,000 a year now work at roughly 110 collection agencies in and around Buffalo, an industry created with the help of seed money from the state of New York. The industry has been a rare economic bright spot in Buffalo, the nation's third-poorest city of its size, a place where 30 percent of the people live in poverty.

Yet, law enforcement and consumer groups point to a dark side: Buffalo, they say, has also become a center for some of the worst elements in the business. Debt collectors, some of them convicted felons, have illegally posed as lawyers or unlawfully browbeat people -- threatening to have them arrested or stripped of custody of their children -- to scare them into making payments.

"Get some clean clothes because you're not coming home any time soon," one debtor was told."


http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Buffal...23347.html?x=0