One student loan defaulter owed the government over $100,000. We'll call him Adu Mgimbwe (not his true name.) This particular defaulter had been out of repayment for many years. Our address was bad, and we didn't have a telephone number. It looked hopeless.
First I tried running his (unusual) name through google. But his name was also the name of a famous person, so the results were no good.
Then I reviewed his credit report very carefully. There wasn't much, but in the early 2000s he had reported an evangelical church as his employer. I couldn't find them online.
So I called every priest and minister in a certain city in Colorado. The fourteenth pastor I called did remember the church. It had been a small store front mission run by an organization in Chicago.
When I googled the church's name and Chicago, I found their website, and also pictures of the debtor in white robes, preaching to hundreds.
As it turns out, he has a doctorate, and is a well known missionary in Ethiopia.
But a bill collector can't do anything without a telephone number. It took several more google searches to find one. When I tried searching for "Doctor Adu Mensa," I managed to find an old resume posted online by one of his friends, listing him as a reference.
It took me some time to figure out how to dial Ethiopia, and several attempts to get him to answer the phone. But when we got past that, he was an easy deal to close. Like many international defaulters, he didn't know about his unpaid student loans. He had assumed they were in defferment.
The moral of the story? We'll find you no matter where you are.
First I tried running his (unusual) name through google. But his name was also the name of a famous person, so the results were no good.
Then I reviewed his credit report very carefully. There wasn't much, but in the early 2000s he had reported an evangelical church as his employer. I couldn't find them online.
So I called every priest and minister in a certain city in Colorado. The fourteenth pastor I called did remember the church. It had been a small store front mission run by an organization in Chicago.
When I googled the church's name and Chicago, I found their website, and also pictures of the debtor in white robes, preaching to hundreds.
As it turns out, he has a doctorate, and is a well known missionary in Ethiopia.
But a bill collector can't do anything without a telephone number. It took several more google searches to find one. When I tried searching for "Doctor Adu Mensa," I managed to find an old resume posted online by one of his friends, listing him as a reference.
It took me some time to figure out how to dial Ethiopia, and several attempts to get him to answer the phone. But when we got past that, he was an easy deal to close. Like many international defaulters, he didn't know about his unpaid student loans. He had assumed they were in defferment.
The moral of the story? We'll find you no matter where you are.
