Judges throughout the country, including recently in cases in New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas, have tossed out lawsuits by National Collegiate, ruling that it did not prove it owned the debt on which it was trying to collect.
The trusts win many of the lawsuits they file automatically, because borrowers often do not show up to fight. Those court victories, which can be used to garnish paychecks and federal benefits like Social Security, can haunt borrowers for decades.
The loans that National Collegiate holds were made to college students more than a decade ago by dozens of different banks, then bundled together by a financing company and sold to investors through a process known as securitization. These private loans were not guaranteed by the federal government, which is the nation’s largest student loan lender.
But as the debt passed through many hands before landing in National Collegiate’s trusts, critical paperwork documenting the loans’ ownership disappeared, according to documents that have surfaced in a little-noticed legal battle involving the trusts in state and federal courts in Delaware and Pennsylvania.
National Collegiate’s legal problems have hinged on its inability to prove it owns the student loans, not on any falsification of documents.
Robyn Smith, a lawyer with the National Consumer Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy group, has seen shoddy and inaccurate paperwork in dozens of cases involving private student loans from a variety of lenders and debt buyers, which she detailed in a 2014 report.
But National Collegiate’s problems are especially acute, she said. Over and over, she said, the company drops lawsuits — often on the eve of a trial or deposition — when borrowers contest them. “I question whether they actually possess the documents necessary to show that they own loans,” Ms. Smith said.
In an unusual situation, one of the financiers behind National Collegiate’s trusts agrees with some of the criticism. He is Donald Uderitz, the founder of Vantage Capital Group, a private equity firm in Delray Beach, Fla., that is the beneficial owner of National Collegiate’s trusts. (Mr. Uderitz’s company keeps whatever money is left after the trusts’ noteholders are paid off.)
He said he was appalled by National Collegiate’s collection lawsuits and wanted them to stop, but an internal struggle between Vantage Capital and others involved in operating the trusts has prevented him from ordering a halt, he said
“We don’t like what’s going on,” Mr. Uderitz said in a recent interview.
“We don’t want National Collegiate to be the poster boy of bad practices in student loan collections, but we have no ability to affect it except through this litigation,” he said, referring to a lawsuit that he initiated last year against the trusts’ loan servicer in Delaware’s Chancery Court, a popular battleground for corporate legal fights.
Like those who took on subprime mortgages, many people with private student loans end up shouldering debt that they never earn enough to repay. Borrowing to finance higher education is an economic decision that often pays off, but federal student loans — a much larger market, totaling $1.3 trillion — are directly funded by the government and come with consumer protections like income-based repayment options.
Private loans lack that flexibility, and they often carry interest rates that can reach double digits. Because of those steep rates, the size of the loans can quickly balloon, leaving borrowers to pay hundreds and, in some cases, thousands of dollars each month.
Others are left with debt for degrees they never completed, because the for-profit colleges they enrolled in closed amid allegations of fraud. Federal student borrowers can apply for a discharge in those circumstances, but private borrowers cannot.
Other large student lenders, like Sallie Mae, also pursue delinquent borrowers in court, but National Collegiate stands apart for its size and aggressiveness, borrowers’ lawyers say.
Lawsuits against borrowers who have fallen behind on their consumer loans are typically filed in state or local courts, where records are often hard to search. This means that there is no national tally of just how often National Collegiate’s trusts have gone to court.
Very few cases ever make it to trial, according to court records and borrowers’ lawyers. Once borrowers are sued, most either choose to settle or ignore the summons, which allows the trusts to obtain a default judgment.
“It’s a numbers game,” said Richard D. Gaudreau, a lawyer in New Hampshire who has defended against several National Collegiate lawsuits. “My experience is they try to bully you at first, and then if you’re not susceptible to that, they back off, because they don’t really want to litigate these cases.”
Transworld Systems, a debt collector, brings most of the lawsuits for National Collegiate against delinquent borrowers. And in legal filings, it is usually a Transworld representative who swears to the accuracy of the records backing up the loan. Transworld did not respond to a request for comment.
Hundreds of cases have been dismissed when borrowers challenge them, according to lawyers, often because the trusts do not produce the paperwork needed to proceed.
Jason Mason, 35, was sued over $11,243 in student loans he took out to finance his freshman year at California State University, Dominguez Hills. His lawyer, Joe Villaseñor of the Legal Aid Society of San Diego, got the case dismissed in 2013, after the trust’s representative did not show up for a court-ordered deposition. It is unclear if the trusts had the paperwork they would have needed to prove their case, Mr. Villaseñor said.
“It was a scary time,” Mr. Mason said of being taken to court. “I didn’t know how they would come after me, or seize whatever I had, to get the money.”
Nancy Thompson, a lawyer in Des Moines, represented students in at least 30 cases brought by National Collegiate in the past few years. All were dismissed before trial except three. Of those, Ms. Thompson won two and lost one, according to her records. In every case, the paperwork Transworld submitted to the court had critical omissions or flaws, she said.
National Collegiate’s beneficial owner, Mr. Uderitz, hired a contractor in 2015 to audit the servicing company that bills National Collegiate’s borrowers each month and is supposed to maintain custody of many loan documents critical for collection cases.
A random sample of nearly 400 National Collegiate loans found not a single one had assignment paperwork documenting the chain of ownership, according to a report they had prepared.
While Mr. Uderitz wants to collect money from students behind on their bills, he says he wants the lawsuits against borrowers to stop, at least until he can get more information about the documentation that underpins the loans.
“It’s fraud to try to collect on loans that you don’t own,” Mr. Uderitz said. “We want no part of that. If it’s a loan we’re owed fairly, we want to collect. We need answers on this.”
Keith New, a spokesman for the servicer, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (known to borrowers as American Education Services), said, “We believe that the auditors were misinformed about the scope of P.H.E.A.A.’s contractual obligations. We are confident that the litigation will reveal that the agency has acted properly and in accordance with its agreements.”
The legal wrangling — now playing out in three separate court cases in Pennsylvania and Delaware — has dragged on for more than a year, with no imminent resolution in sight. Borrowers are caught in the turmoil. Thousands of them are unable to get answers about critical aspects of their loans because none of the parties involved can agree on who has the authority to make decisions. Some 2,000 borrower requests for forbearance and other help have gone unanswered, according to a court filing late last year.
—Susan C. Beachy contributed research.