In What Cases is Extrajudicial Collection Illegal?

When extrajudicial collection takes place under certain circumstances, it is considered illegal. Illegal extrajudicial collection is understood to mean the use of verbal or intimidatory violence, exercised personally or through any other means (mainly telephone), to require the payment of an expired debt.

Regularly, this type of act is perpetrated by collection offices and is committed in this circumstance, and there are four causes of complaint that can be characterized as crimes, which are the following:

1. Threatening, insulting or intimidating the debtor, family members, co-workers or any other person unrelated to the debt.
2. Sending of documents which appear to be judicial documents or appear to represent a court or authority before which the act of recovery is “being examined”.
3. Collection management with abuse and offenses.
4. Use the name or denomination that resembles a public institution.

In the face of this type of abuse, the authorities have determined that anyone who carries out the illegal extrajudicial collection activity will be punished with a prison term of between one and four years and a fine of between fifty thousand and three hundred thousand pesos.

• If these “offices”, in addition to or already referred to, come to use false documents or stamps, the penalty and the financial sanction will increase one half.
• Likewise, if they engage in usurpation of functions or profession (showing themselves as some official, personnel of some government agency, etc.), the rules of the contest of crimes set forth in the Federal Penal Code shall apply.

Now you know that such acts are ILLEGAL and have serious consequences for those who commit them.

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