Savannah, Mo. Former Treasurer Faces 52 Federal Charges of Fraud

A woman is currently being charged of 52 federal offenses after she illegally got her hands on over $900,000.

Vicky D McDonell, a 61 year old is facing the federal grand jury for allegedly obtaining cash illegally from two companies from Savannah, Mo. She will soon be facing complaints of fraud; 44 of them are wire fraud, 4 are bank frauds, 3 mail fraud and aside from fraud she is facing a count for false statement. McDonell is looking at 75 years imprisonment if she is proven guilty of all the offenses.

The documents in court say that McDonell started to loot from the companies since 1997 when she held the position of treasurer and also a partner to MPC Billboards Inc. and Max Pro Consultants Inc.

These two companies are operational in Savannah, Mo., and are owned of business men Guy Defenbaugh, Fred Ramsay and James Morten.

According to the court, McDonell held the books of the companies, she also oversaw the operations in the office, she took head of the financial department, took care of the bills and billed and collected the account receivables from customers. She did all the financials for the companies without the supervision of the three owners; they had trusted everything to her completely.

The accused treasurer is being suspected of having written herself checks from the business to take care of her personal expenditures. These include her automobile payments, renovation and landscape makeover of her house, and even gifts. She also had unauthorized loans and checks written to her children and her mother for over $35,000 she has done this for almost 12 years.

Moreover, Ms. McDonell was said to have used the credit card of the company to pay for her own expenses and arranged that the cash statements would be mailed to her home address.

It was also said that she may have overpaid her own salary by $392,695. According to the FBI, she has given confessions to stealing some of the money. If she is proven guilty she is going to have to relinquish properties that she had gotten from the scheme and proceeds from $906,425.25 with interest.

What You do Not Know About Student Loans

Education is believed by many to be the most important element to succeed in life. This is the stepping stone to get a high paying job and live a happy, carefree life until you retire.

Many American citizens have realized the fast growing tuition fee rates which have overtaken the price on necessities and even some family’s payrolls. The amount that individuals loan for student tuition’s has even exceeded the amount of automobile and credit card loans in the industry.

There is one very important fact that you should put in your mind if you are a student that is never to get yourself into debt. For instance, if you cannot afford tuition in the most prestigious law school like Yale, then it would be too ambitious, not to mention foolish in your part to take on loads of credit card debt just to enroll in the school. The future is always uncertain, what if your plans do not turn out the way you wished and instead of graduating as one of the best law students in the world, you are overwhelmed with debt and bad credit.

Other piece of advice for schools, if you keep borrowing money from financial institutions because you think increased tuition fee rates will take care of them in the near future, then be warned. Though the tuition in schools have increased by 7.45 percent in the past ten years, according to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, the students that are enrolling have also dropped in numbers by about half compared to before.

Public schools usually have to deal with parents who can complain and demand for more value in the tuition they pay the dean and their money usually go to foot-ball stadiums, or other sports or other visible projects. In private schools though, it is not the case, the school and the students are more into the curriculum, the laws and the priorities of the students and the school. But even so, they are more dependent on federal loans and more prone to criticism from the public.

Today, schools are asking more charges from their students, and the more they ask for these charges the more loans are available for the students. The students fall into debt but the schools, get their money without worries.If only schools can be bridge that handles the loans of students and the government, make the students accountable to the government so that they do not run off with a huge debt unpaid.

Know and Understand the Importance of Credit Scores

According to Federal Reserve data, the total debt of Americans is approximately $252 billion. However, most Americans do not have sufficient knowledge about credit information. They do not know how the credit scores are being calculated, what are the information in the credit report and the effect of good score and bad score in their financial well-being.

The Consumer Federation of America’s survey of 1000 Americans showed that only 25% are aware that generic credit scores can be availed from various resources aside from the three big credit bureaus. And about 30% to 40% do not know that their marital status and age do not count in the calculation of their credit score.

To analyze credit score is not easy even if you review it more than once in a year. No matter who is doing the calculating of the credit score, the factors that are being considered are the same .The complexity is in the weight that each factor contributes because it is variable. It is not simple to determine what is “good” score and “fair” score.

Here are some of the frequently asked questions and answers:

Q. How do you define a credit score?

A. A credit score is a measure used by creditors to evaluate your credit worthiness or your capacity to repay a debt. It is a three digit number that creditors issue.

Q. How do they calculate the credit score?

A. Information from credit report are gathered by credit bureaus and feed it to algorithms to calculate the credit score. This information is taken from many sources like the credit card issuers, companies that grant mortgage, auto lenders and others. The information includes the way your bills are paid whether it is delayed or on time; how long is the credit history; amount of credit used compared to the remaining amount available; the type of credit accounts and how many times did you apply for a new credit card lately.

Q. Why is there more than one credit score?

A. There are many sources of scoring models for the calculation of credit score. FICO and Vantage are the two most popular scoring models. FICO’s score ranges from 300 to 850 while that of Vantage ranges from 501 to 990. The consumer’s credit score will vary and it depends on who does the calculation. The score you get when you request from an agency is not the same as the score the lender gets when he requests from the same agency.

Q. What is the indication of a “good” credit score?

For FICO scoring model, a score of 700 is considered high. With this credit score, the consumer is credit worthy and may qualify for a lower interest rate for a loan. Vantage scoring consists of a number and a letter. From 700 to 799, the letter score is “C” which is considered by lenders as an average score. A score of 800 to 899 is equivalent to letter “B” and 900 is an “A.”

Q. How can I consistently monitor my credit score?

A. You should request for your credit score once a year to keep track of it but you have to pay for it. There are many cost effective ways to get your credit score. The credit report however, can be availed of for free once a year from the three major credit bureaus but this does not include your credit score.  It is very important that you properly monitor your credit report in order to get a high score which will give many advantages for your future financial transactions.

Dealer, Buyer Argue About Failed Car Financing Plan

At the Texas Truck Headquarters located in San Pedro, Rafael Diaz wanted to buy a 2004 Mazda RX8.

According to Diaz, he gave a down payment of $2,000 on the car. Then, someone told him paying for the balance of the purchase amount would be granted. With that, Diaz drove off with the car.

After a few weeks, someone told him to bring in the car for license plates.

George Alejos of the League of United Latin American Citizens was requested by Diaz to represent him, since he cannot converse well using the English language. Alejos said that a person took the keys and drove off. After 15 minutes of waiting, the same person comes back and says to Diaz that he can already leave because the car was just reposed.

According to Alejos, something went wrong with initial financing plan. The car dealer did not want to return both the car and the down payment.

Moreover, Alejos said that in order to protect the public, these kinds of dealerships must be discontinued.

Jorge Martinez, the General Manager of Texas Truck, settled to meet up with Alejos and Diaz so that they can fix the problem and added that Diaz was only telling a part of the whole story.

According to Martinez, in order to get financing, Diaz presented paycheck stubs that appeared to be printed at home, that the year to date totals was the same in all the paycheck stubs, and that Diaz disliked the condition of being charged higher interest rates because of poor credit.

Also, Martinez said Diaz thought the interest rate was too high for him because it was greater than what he actually intended.

Martinez took the car back because Diaz would not answer calls to redo the financing plan. As a defense, he decided to keep the deposit. They also attempted to let him pay for repossess fees.

Ultimately, the down payment was returned to Diaz and he learned something in car financing.

Normally, dealers allow buyers to take the vehicles if they are sure of the approval of the financing. Still, experts recommend buyers not to take the vehicles unless the financing is completed.

Consumer Protection Law Defends Oregon Collection Agency

In the previous time, if, for instance, you were an Oregonian consumer, with a number of poor credit card balances but were able to withstand until the statute of limitations passed, you were more or less sure of success. However, this may be an unethical way of managing poor debt.

Now, for the month of March, a few changes might have been made to those things.

There are three cases in Oregon that looks as if it indicates a means to a restored option to collect for collection agencies. After incurring credit card charges, delinquent credit card owners can be sued by debt collectors for a maximum of six years. This is in opposition to a preceding decree proposed that in order to be considered off the hook, as you might say, Oregonians had to wait for a maximum of three years.

This latest rule was brought about by three independent consumer cases, all concerning Chase Bank, which is based in Delaware. In Delaware, credit card debt is in a three-year statute of limitations, so when collection agencies purchased the delinquent accounts from Chase, the customers assumed they could sue due to their out-of-stat debts.

Nonetheless, the Court of Appeals in Oregon decided to sustain the six-year statute, despite the signed contract stating the three-year statute of Delaware would be standard.

The change can be seen in the fact that a third-party collection agency purchased the debt. As a result, it initiated a condition in the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act that hinders collectors from taking legal action from a long distance. The added condition also insists that consumers can be sued by collection agencies in the state in which the consumer lives in.

At the end of the day, it seems weird and appropriate at the same time that a protection law intended for consumers was utilized to defend the rights of a collection agency.