How Did Sears Take Advantage Of Bankruptcy Fraud?

An article from the Internal Revenue Service website tells of a Virginia businessman named Michael Wayne Harding, of Keswick, was sentenced to thirty months in prison and asked to pay more than $2,019,403 million in restitution for previously pleading guilty to one count of wire fraud and one count of bankruptcy fraud. This is the kind of thing that needs to be dealt with. It will help rescue a lot of people from been duped through bankruptcy fraud. Bankruptcy is no new thing. Whilst some people who need it just to survive, others who take advantage of the way it works. By doing that, they could keep all their money but get rid of their debts. People think of many ways to take advantage of bankruptcy and because the FBI can't find

Sears was using a credit card and issuing it out to anyone that would take it, whether they qualified for it or not. When people started declaring bankruptcy, Sears wanted their money. They asked these people to pay their debts through reaffirmation, a legal way of signing a deal through a judge; however, a third of bankrupts do so because often times judges view them as sucker deals that prevents people from starting afresh. Sears did not want to waste time so they skipped the courts and had the people pay it directly, which was considered as an unenforceable law agreement to collect debts, some of which no longer existed. After a decade of doing this they finally got caught. The process of what they were doing was not in their procedural manual. Many on the management team were not aware of what was going on. Sears was not rigorous in ensuring that its employees were collecting debts in a lawful manner and handing out credit card to people who qualified for it. Sears tried to circumvent the bankruptcy code. They misguided many of their consumers just so they could get their money. Now they have lost respect in the eyes of the public

I had a talk with a neighbor who works in a law firm and he explained to me that the bankruptcy laws are the same. However, it is the exemptions that are different and are the cause of the problems because some people will do everything they can to keep the lifestyle that they cherish. "Like Powers, thousands of businesses and individuals file for bankruptcy each year, and state exemptions offer many of them enough protection to wipe off their debt without paying a cent and keep some of their treasured riches." States need to look at them and at past cases to see where people abuse them. According to Robert Fishman the president of the American Bankruptcy Institute from Illinois, "Florida, Texas and Iowa are considered to be the most "debtor-friendly" states, and by contrast, is considered to have "creditor-friendly bankruptcy laws" (68). This implies that there is an inconsistency between states that needs to be addressed. States shouldn't be so different in their laws and it’s like they are their own