Are you looking for new strategies to get your clients results and change more lives? This week, I'm joined by Attorney Haseeb Hussain, he's the founder of Haseeb Legal, and he's going to share all about powerful legal action that you can take based on the FCRA and a whole lot more.
Being a successful credit hero takes a lot of skills. But the most important might be persistence to get results!
Today’s guest is going to share some great tips for getting those results. He’s an attorney who helps consumers who are being treated unfairly by creditors, collections, credit bureaus, and more and he gets them compensated. He has filed and resolved hundreds of consumer claims against Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. He knows a ton, and I know you're gonna love this interview.
So, let's welcome Haseeb Hussain to the show!
Here are some of the top highlights from our conversion:
Can you tell us about your law firm and your practice areas?
Yeah, so we're a consumer litigation firm. So all facets of consumer litigation we take care of, mostly FCRA. We're suing Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion weekly. We do Sue debt collectors, we sue TCPA collection calls, we sue telemarketers, you name it. If you're a consumer, and you're getting harassed or mistreated or deceived, we sue whoever is doing that.
I want to know how did you go from being a lawyer to becoming a really popular TikTok influencer.
Yeah, I had a Gen Z friend and they kept telling me to get on TikTok because people are learning so many things. And this was right when COVID started. I wasn't bought into the whole thing. I was like, Okay, this is just for the kids. What can a lawyer like me do? I'm now turning 28 and I'm like, I think I'm past this TikTok age category. So what can I provide to people and what can they consume off of what I say? It's just kids I'm speaking to and then one day just dawned on me. I downloaded the app. I scrolled through it. I'm like, wait, there are attorneys on here?
How about this: let me make a tutorial about how to check your credit reports, how to sue a debt collector, what you can sue a debt collector for. I made one on the first day, it was about how you can get your debt collector to pay you money. So it's like the UNO reverse card. I even had that there and everything. And then I made the video, and posted it, very simple, low quality, low editing, just informative. I make the video, go to sleep, wake up have 10,000 followers. I'm like, wait a second. I might be I might be on something. Well, overnight 10,000 followers. I think that video got hundreds of 1000s of views. People followed because it provided value. People eat that stuff up, whenever there's an opportunity of making any sort of money, they eat it up.
So then I started building on this niche of how can I tell people about laws that they should know about? And then how to get compensated for things that is happening to them. And from then on it turned into something that became a law firm and livelihood for me. Would I do it again? Absolutely, because I don't think I could ever go back to working at a law firm. If I have to do that. I would just leave law but they're not hiring a law firm because they're a law firm. They're hiring you because you're you and I've really been able to get my personality out there just not talking about law specifically, but about everything, and then being relatable to people.
For people like me, because I'm not always in a suit and tie a lot of these lawyers on TikTok are and they're not a lot of them are not that successful, or haven't been able to get a following because I want to look relatable, I'm not speaking to you, like I'm a lawyer, I'm not using this jargon. Very simple language, easy to digest, easy to understand, talking to you person to person, not lawyer to person, because I don't want to come off like I'm above you, I don't want to make it look like you don't know anything. I know stuff because I studied it. But I don't want to make you look stupid, because at that point, you're not going to trust me. So I found a way to really sell it to people about the fact that, hey, this is stuff that you need to know, I'm not a lawyer, I'm your friend.
Since you're a consumer litigation attorney, and you focus a lot on the FCRA. Can you explain exactly what that means in plain terms, and maybe more about how the FCRA works?
So, actually, I work with a lot of credit repair organizations. That's my bread and butter, I sue credit bureaus, and I work hand in hand with credit repair companies that need my services to really get people's client reports updated to accurately reflect how they should be reporting. And it all starts with defining inaccuracies. And after they're properly disputed, and they're not fixed, people send over their files to us, we get them fixed, we sue under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
There are multiple types of cases. So one of them could be identity fraud. If you have police reports, FTC reports. Your client just says that account is not his, I don't know whose it is. It could be a mixed file, it could be identity that was stolen. But they did all the right steps. They got all the documents they needed. And then their disputes were sent out. And they're not just BS dispute saying this, this needs to come off because I just don't want it on there. No, this must come off because I don't recognize it. Here's all the proof. Here's a police report. And they come back at you and say no, this is verified as accurate. Now I'm not able to get a car, I'm not able to get a mortgage. What can we do about it? Well, things that credit repair companies can do is just keep on disputing yet and a lot of them do. But it comes to a point where the Bureau's aren't going to respond to these disputes anymore. They verified it as accurate once and you really just need to escalate it.
That's what we're here for. Consumer attorneys work hand in hand with credit repair companies to escalate what a lot of them cannot do. I have a relationship with who I sue. We sue them every day of the week. So I'm talking to these people constantly. So if I bring a claim, and I believe that there's merit, and my client reports to me that there is merit to these claims, we'll get it done for your client.
And that's the that's the value added that working with an attorney, a consumer attorney, can do for your clients. And I recommend all credit repair companies. So work hand in hand with with the consumer attorney, find one in your area, find one that you trust, run things by them, they will make themselves available to you.
What other kinds of things should a credit repair business owner look for? When looking for an attorney like yourself?
So the best part about what I do with my credit repair organizations is I tell them, don't ever hesitate to send us a file. Even if there's nothing on it, I'm not going to get mad at you send everything that you got, especially the reports of bankruptcies on if your client says that, hey, this item was paid. I don't know why the balance didn't go down. I don't know why I'm being reported as late will tell you, hey, maybe you should dispute it attached proof of payment, and see what they come back with a lot of the times.
It's the consumer that's going to be able to tell a credit repair company, what is inaccurate on report, you're not going to know when your client paid on time or they didn't. That's something that your client knows. So reports like that. You have to get with your client to walk through every trade line to make sure everything's accurate. If it's not, then you could dispute and if they don't come back as fixed, or if it's just verified as accurate, you can dish it out to an attorney.
I think cases with bankruptcies on the credit report, you can just send those to an attorney, you don't even have to dispute anything. What the attorney is going to do is they have enough information in front of them to cross-check what they need to cross-check. A lot of attorneys that credit repair companies associate with will tell you that don't even worry about checking stuff yourself as a credit repair company because sometimes you're going to miss stuff that we will find because we know what to look for. And we've done this 1000s of times, especially for credit repair companies starting out some of the ones who've been doing it for a while know themselves, but and I talk to my clients or my credit repair companies all the time about it. And they said they send me Consumer Bankruptcy files that have dismissals on them. They don't know how should the accounts be reporting when they're bankruptcies dismissed? Well, if a bankruptcy is dismissed, shouldn't that mean that all of the accounts in the trade lines reporting on a credit report should not be reporting with the bankruptcy status anymore? Well, why is it that's something that the credit bureaus should have picked up on their scrub should have caught the fact that there is no longer a bankruptcy, it was dismissed in the fact that they're still reporting as wage earners in every single trade lines reporting as a wage earner, we got to FCRA claim on her hand, that's a procedures claim. You don't even have to dispute it.
A lot of people have this misconception that you have to dispute items on your credit report. And if they come back as verified as accurate, then you can't sue a creditor if they come back and say that this is right. You can't sue a credit bureau. That's not always the case, you're also able to file FCRA cases. And this is what we pride ourselves on in kind of moving forward because I've taken these cases to summary judgment. I've been through it with Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. So they know I'll take these all the way. And that's something that I've been able to flush out is I've gotten courts to say wait under 1681 Eb, you don't need to dispute it, because the credit bureaus have all the information that they need on hand to know that an account was included in bankruptcy or it wasn't if they themselves are reporting it as dismissed, then they know that no accounts should be reporting is dismissed, and they should go back to the furniture to get the proper reporting for those accounts. That's something that I'm able to see that a lot of credit repair companies aren't. So it's really important that all bankruptcy files, as a credit repair company should always get run through a lawyer and they should review them to make sure all of them are reporting accurately.
Another big case that we see is after bankruptcies are filed and on a credit report, oftentimes, the Bureaus will misreport a conversion like a chapter seven was converted to a 13 FCRA claim, you don't have to tell them because they buy that information from LexisNexis. So if there's a chapter seven that was converted to a 13, they're thinking that the bankruptcy filing date is the date that the seven was filed, when really it's the conversion date. That is the one at issue. Now, we need to cross-check accounts by the conversion date, not the filing date. And that's a big reason why the Bureaus will miss that an account was included in bankruptcy because they don't know the proper date that the bankruptcy was filed. They're just reporting the file date, not the conversion date.
Oftentimes, we see bankruptcies missing the proper status, sometimes a bureau will miss the fact that it was discharged and they just have it bankruptcy filed. So for all these years, that consumer has a bankruptcy on the report, and no disposition, no filing, justifiably no dismissal or discharge. And so they're going around applying for credit. And the creditors think that they're in bankruptcy 1681 Eb. We sue on that we get your client compensated, we get them paid, and we get the accountant, we'll get the bankruptcy updated. Big misconception about what credit repair companies think that I do is get bankruptcies off a consumer credit report. I get that question all the time. Hey, do you guys get bankruptcies off? The answer's no, we can't use the litigation process to get bankruptcies off a credit report. If I tried to do that, they would laugh at me. Mostly because they're gonna ask me, Wait, did the client actually file for bankruptcy or not? I can't say anything but yes, because it's public record. We can't use the litigation process to get that off. It's just I have no legal basis to do it. A lot of credit repair companies are able to, and that's a credit repair thing. But I don't think that's an FCRA litigation thing. So there's a lot of misconception about what we do. But never shy away from bothering a consumer attorney, they should always be willing to get bothered by a credit repair company, send them everything, run everything by them, and see what could be a case and what couldn't it'll help your clients out.
What are common violations that credit repair businesses should look out for?
Well, with the FDCPA. The basic ones are you tell them, and I'm seeing this more recently is in validation request letters that consumers are sending back to debt collectors, they're saying, please reach out to me on Mondays through Fridays from 12 to five and they're calling outside of those hours. You've informed them that you were only available during these times. So they call you at 7pm or 6pm, FDCPA violation, debt collectors are getting sued for that. Also not getting proper identification before disclosing a debt to party that's not you. So like my cell phone rings, my mom picks up and the debt collector tells my mom that I owe a debt violation, or another our friend or a family member, very basic stuff. Harassment, we're gonna sue you. Threats, abusive language, curse words, debt collectors cannot do all that there's a very exhaustive list. If you just Google what can debt collectors get sued for 1000s of websites will populate showing you exactly what to look out for. And despite all debt collectors knowing that what to do and what not to do. They do it anyways. And it's happening more often than not
And I'm just curious, when you do sue one of these companies, collections, credit bureaus, what have you? How big can these cash settlements get?
So it depends on what the damages are. So let's take FCRA for example. What you're entitled to under the law is up to $1,000 statutory damages, and then you get your actual damages. And like, let's say that nothing happened, besides a few credit denials, what you're looking at is give or take just your statutory. But let's say that you were homeless for a while, because there's a bankruptcy reporting on your credit report that belongs to your dad, your dad filed for bankruptcy, big, big cases that we get our mixed file cases. So sometimes, like brothers have accounts reporting on each other's reports or bankruptcies reporting on each other reports send those to us.
Those are huge cases. Whenever somebody has someone else's debt reporting or bankruptcy reporting on their report, now I can't get a house. I'm homeless for a while because no one's giving me credit. No lenders giving me credit because because they think I'm in bankruptcy. I've tried disputing it's not coming off, what do I do? You get compensated for emotional distress as well. You get compensated if you have to go to therapy because you're homeless, because you can't get this because they're reporting it like that, and you told them to get it off your report, we're looking at actual damages. And that in a jury determines that.
And that's why credit bureaus are very afraid to get this all the way to trial. They're ready to award crazy jury verdicts for cases like that. So keep denial letters, keep all everything that's showing how what type of damages you have, because something is reporting the way it is on your report. Denial letters, you have to go to therapy because I just can't get this credit up because they're not removing this bankruptcy or they're not removing my brother's accounts off my reports. This is driving me crazy. I can't get anything, can't get any credit. Keep everything, keep all those medical bills, keep whatever you can, because that's what you're going to see compensation for. That's what you're entitled to on top of the statutory damages, and then your attorney's fees are all paid there. That's what they're responsible for in a case like these Attorney fees are the responsibility of defendants in these cases.
Want to hear more from Haseeb? Check out the full interview on YouTube.
I'LL END BY SAYING
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