Consumer Law Attorney Haseeb Hussain Reveals Hidden Credit Repair Strategies!

Hey, credit heroes. Are you looking for new strategies to get your clients results and change more lives? Well, today 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. So you better stick around. So the big question is, how can we take our passion for helping people with their credit and turn it into a successful business without taking loans, without spending a fortune by bootstrapping it from nothing so we can help the most people and still become highly profitable? That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Daniel Rosen, and welcome to Credit Repair Business Secrets. Our most successful credit heroes, the ones who make a great living and make a massive impact, they all have one thing in common. They are persistent until they get results. And our guest today is gonna share some great tips for getting those results. Haseeb is an attorney who helps consumers who are being treated unfairly by creditors, collections, credit bureaus, and more, and he gets them compensated. He's 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. So please welcome to the show Haseeb Hussain.

Thank you. Thank you. It's good to be here. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here. I'm really, really excited, and I want to know everything about you, but let's start with the basics. You're in Chicago, right?

I'm in Chicago. It just started getting cold. But that's the best time to start just bundling up and suing credit bureaus.

It's a good time. And 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, 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's doing that.

And do you work with clients all over the country?

All over the country. We have local counsel everywhere. It's all federal law, so we're able to practice in a lot of states, and we're licensed in the main states where the credit bureaus are headquarters, so that's Illinois, Georgia, and then, and then California as well. We have attorneys there.

What's amazing about you to me is you make so many videos and they are awesome. I got to tell you, I've been binge watching you for days. I, I, and I also, well, all your TikTok stuff, but I, I also watched you on Love is Blind on Netflix where you were a contestant and my girlfriend and I love that show, so I want to say congratulations on that. Was that a fun experience?

It was. I did it because it would be a fun experience, and I'm glad I did. Actually, my social media took off from that. I wasn't even a big part of the show. I wasn't main cast or anything. Small parts of it, they had me sprinkled in here and there because I didn't find a connection. But what came of that was whole law practice I was able to start because my social media took off. So, yeah, crazy thing.

Oh, wow, that's amazing. All from social media now. And you're really, really popular on TikTok. You have hundreds of videos there and over half a million followers. I want to know, how did you go from being a lawyer to becoming a really popular TikTok influencer? What, what motivated you to start sharing content on, on social media?

Yeah, I had a Gen Z friend and they kept telling me to get on TikTok because, you know, people are learning so much things. And this is 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, I'm now what it was like just turning 28. I'm like, I think I'm past the 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, it just dawned on me. Like, 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. Just, they 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 made the video, 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. Wow. I might be, I might be onto something overnight. 10,000 followers. I think that video got hundreds of thousands of views. People followed because it provided value people love. They eat that stuff up. Whenever there's an opportunity at making any sort of money, they eat it up. So that, and 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 that is happening to them. And from then just it turned into something that became a law firm and a livelihood for me. And 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, 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. I'm 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.

Yeah, I love that. And I love that you break it down in easy to digest language that anyone can understand. Now, our audience are credit repair business owners. So let's get back on topic here. Since you're a consumer litigation attorney and you focus a lot on the fcra, can you explain to our audience exactly what that means in plain terms and maybe more about how the FCRA works?

So I actually work with a lot of credit repair organizations. That's that, that's my bread and butter. I sue credit bureaus and I work hand in hand with, 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 got 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 disputes saying, this needs to come off because I just don't want it on there. No, this needs to cut off because I don't recognize it. Here's all the proof. Here's a police report. And, 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 the credit repair companies can do is just keep on disputing it. And a lot of them do. But it comes to a point where the bureau's aren't gonna 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 escalate what they work hand in hand with credit repair companies to escalate what, 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 is 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 value added that working with an attorney, a consumer attorney can do for your clients. And I recommend all credit repair companies to work hand in hand with, with, with the consumer attorney. Find one in your area, find one that you trust. Run things by them. They will, they will make themselves available to you. I have a Rolodex of credit repair companies that run so many, hey, is this a violation of the fcra? What can I do for this client? And I almost every day, a lot, a big part of my day goes into just telling people, hey, this is actually something that you guys can do about a dispute should look like this. I give whatever suggestions I can. So one part of the FCRA is identity theft. But a big part of my practice that a lot of people don't really bite is post bankruptcy credit repair and FCRA surrounding that. So that's actually where this practice started. And it kind of started from a firm that I used to work at that used to sue on this issue specifically. And I made it my own. The issue that I see the most is whenever there is a bankruptcy reporting on a credit report, the proper first step that I recommend that all credit repair companies do is talk to a consumer lawyer, send them the report and have them review it and give you feedback on it. Because what they're going to do is cross check the bankruptcy with all of the accounts that are reporting on the credit report. They're going to look at the balances, they're going to look at the statuses. What they're going to do is see when the bankruptcy was filed and to make sure that all pre petition bankruptcy debts are actually discharged and reporting as that. And if they're not, we bring those under 1681 EB, we bring it as a procedures claim. And if there are credit denials associated with balances reporting that your client doesn't actually owe because they were discharged in bankruptcy, we sue the credit bureaus under that law and we're able to get our clients compensated. We're able to get those accounts updated on their credit report if not removed. Because a lot of the times when credit bureau, well, credit repair companies take it upon themselves to just dispute the bankruptcies off, they're not really thinking about the balances that are left on the accounts. More often than not is when they dispute those bankruptcies off. All of a sudden a bunch of balances pop back up on these accounts. If that's not handled at the outset, that's going to happen to a lot of your clients. So I think a first proper step really is to run all bankruptcy reports to a consumer attorney. A lot of them are more than happy to help you guys out. And I think it's a very big value add to your practice in associating yourself with the right consumer attorney.

That's awesome. And what else do you do that helps consumers?

So on top of FCRA in those those types of claims where something is actually inaccurate and disputed, or the bankruptcy type of case, when there's a lot of these debtors are in collections, whenever there's harassment, they get sent dunning letters that are unfair, deceptive, lying. We handle FDCPA as well. I actually used to be a FDCPA defense attorney for a Mid sized law firm. So I'm now at the point where I'm suing my former clients. I'm suing major credit debt collectors and it brings me satisfaction. But now it's kind of fun suing your old boss too. I'm on hearings with him all the time these days. But FDCPA is a big part of our practice too. And your clients are always getting these, sent these letters. The best way to do is just to dish it off to a consumer attorney, let them handle it and you know, you don't have to think about it. Sometimes they come off the credit report, sometimes those debts are able to get deleted. And that's not really stuff that a lot of credit repair companies do. Your job really is in most credit repair companies solely just do credit repair. They send disputes and hope things come off. But this is one way to get get stuff done for your client, get them compensated. They're more than happy to do it. And the best part is they never have to pay out of pocket to a consumer attorney. You will not have to pay us. Your client will not have to pay us. We get all of our fees paid by the defendants in these cases. These are fee shifting cases. It's a win win. I mean it makes zero sense not to associate with the proper consumer attorney. But you have to find one that you trust, someone who makes themselves available to you and not blowing you off, who you can run your questions by. It's kind of like having in house counsel in a way.

Amazing. What other kinds of things should a credit repair business owner look for when looking for what to forward to 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 with bankruptcies on it. 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. We'll tell you, hey, maybe you should dispute it. Attach 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 a 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 that off 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's 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 gonna miss stuff that we will find because we know what to look for. And we've done this thousands 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, and I talk to my clients or my credit repair companies all the time about it. They send me consumer bankruptcy files that have dismissals on them. They don't know how. How should the accounts be reporting when their bankruptcy is dismissed? Well, if a bankruptcy is dismissed, shouldn't that mean that all of the accounts and 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. And the fact that they're still reporting as wage earners and every single trade line is reporting as a wage earner, or we got an FCRA claim on our hand. That's a procedures claim. You don't even have to dispute it. That's not. It's like 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 credit. Or 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 and 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 flesh 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 account should be reporting as dismissed and they should go back to the furnisher 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 are filed and on a credit report, oftentimes the bureaus will misreport a conversion. Like a Chapter 7 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 7 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 that that's 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 a bankruptcy filed. So for all these years, a consumer has a bankruptcy on the report and no disposition, no filing, just a filing, 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 account, 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 is no, we don't. 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 going to 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. A consumer attorney 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. Sure.

And that would really make a client happy. I'm sure. To get paid.

Absolutely no people. It's the funniest thing with fcra. They sometimes these clients, they get in touch with you, you file a lawsuit for them. And the best part is, like, they're not. If they were to pay you out of pocket, they would be breathing down your neck every day. What's the status of my case? They're not paying you out of pocket. All of these things are fee shifting. I know. No consumer attorney taking these upfront out of pocket or even doing billables. It's just not happening. So in cases like this, where they're not paying you, you're filing these lawsuits for people and they forget that they even filed a lawsuit. So when you call them with a settlement offer a month later, they're like, wait a second, I forgot I filed that. And then they get super excited to hear that there's like possibly money coming their way on top of that, getting their account updated. So it's just the way they just super ecstatic about it, and they're like, wait a second, cherry on top. I don't have to pay you. No, that's what we agreed to. That's. That's in the retainer. You don't have to pay us out of pocket. All of our fees were covered in this case.

Amazing. What are some common mistakes that credit repair business owners make and how can they avoid them?

The most common mistake, I would say, that credit repair companies make is over promising what they can do with bankruptcies. I see it all the time. I'm able to get a bankruptcy off or. Or when they even get bankruptcies off the report with whatever dispute process, which I'm not all too familiar with, I don't do that, but they do. And somehow I see that they're successful in getting the bankruptcy off. And like we talked about, accounts pop back up on the report, balances pop back up. Now what do I Do right. I sent a credit bureau a dispute that says that bankruptcy is not mine, it should come off. But I did file this bankruptcy but you know, take it off and they do so and then synchrony, $7,000 charge off, American Express, $10,000 charge off, all of them come back on the report. What do I do now? I just sent a dispute to the bureau that said that this bankruptcy is not mine. How can I come back and say wait a second, these accounts were included in bankruptcy. And people, and people with credit repair companies, they say how can I get these off now? And then they send me the disputes that they sent and then I'm looking at it and I'm saying but if I were to file a lawsuit on this, they're going to say you disputed the bankruptcies off so you caused these accounts to pop back up on the report and now you're filing a lawsuit or now you want to file a lawsuit to try to get these off by saying that they were included in the bankruptcy that you asked for us to take off. And it's kind of like a contradiction and, and it doesn't make any sense. So I'm of the opinion that sometimes having the bankruptcy on the report isn't the worst thing in the world as much as having charge offs and balances that are reporting on a credit report off the report. It's really about the debt to income ratio. The bankruptcy will come off the report when enough time passes. But I've really seen several thousand dollar charge offs on the report. Really screw people's credit scores. Everybody deals with their practice, how they want and a lot of people want bankruptcies off their reports. Can't use a legal process to do it, but credit repair companies do. And all the power to you if you are able to do it, and if you could do it without having balances pop up off back on the report, then cool, do your thing. But I've seen it go the other way as well. And people don't know how to get out of that situation sometimes. But sometimes it's issues that credit repair companies themselves cause and then their clients are upset that there's a bunch of balances now owed and they don't know what to do at that point. The cool thing is if you do associate with a consumer attorney, we are able to get in touch with the in house counsel at these bureaus. So some of them will agree to just put the bankruptcy back up if it means getting those accounts off the report. Sometimes they'll just delete the accounts, but or at least update them to remove the balances. So we're able to have that sort of back and forth communication with the bureaus to get the report, reporting to how it should be, not how we want it. Because sometimes how we want it isn't how it should be or what's accurate. So I've found that they're actually pretty fair in working with you to get stuff updated.

It's really good to know. Good stuff. Let's talk about consumer rights and debt collection. How do you recommend handling debt collection? Letters?

Collection letters is what, what I started off doing just as a defense, as defense side, we would, we would get plaintiff attorneys suing us all the time over the envelope is showing the account number or the dunning language isn't proper, the, the validation isn't proper, stuff like that. So, so it, the FDCPA gets really technical. But I do find a lot of credit repair companies trying to also delve in that space, get into arbitration, representing their clients that way. And that's all fine and dandy, but I do think that attorneys are very up to date on what is going on. What is the latest in collection law and what type of language is safe harbor language that debt collection companies can't get sued for or what falls short of that and what they can get sued for. So we have access to the most latest in FDCPA news in what states. So if you get a letter, if your client gets a letter, send it to a set, send it to a collection attorney, send it to a debt collection attorney. We will, we'll review it, we'll cross check it, or we'll advise you to dispute it, we'll advise you to ask for validation if it doesn't come back. We'll guide you through the process. We don't even have to call it advising. We can tell you to look out for certain things just to, just to foster your relationship. I mean, I think that's the benefit of associating with a, with a consumer attorney as part of your credit repair practices. We will serve as advisors or at least friends who will inform you about what the law is and what the latest is and what you should look out for. Because you guys as credit repair companies are focused on, you know, running your business. We're focused on understanding what the latest in law is and how it gets interpreted amongst the courts and what could be a violation, what can't be. And at the end of the day, we're all helping consumers out. So we would work hand in hand with you guys and Talk to you about what's proper and how you guys should run like your run your practice but at the same time what's beyond what you guys do and what we handle. Credit repair companies don't have to take it amongst themselves if like your client's getting sued. We know many debt defense attorneys that you can refer those debt defense. Well, they'll negotiate the settlement. They'll get stuff off the report they'll pay to delete. They'll they can help your clients who are getting sued. There's a lot of avenues but I do think it's a mistake when people don't think to associate with the consumer attorney.

What are common violations that credit repair businesses should look out for?

Well with the fdcpa, the basic, basic ones are you tell them and I'm seeing this more recently is invalidation 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 5 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 or a friend or a family member. Very basic stuff. Harassment, we're going to 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? Thousands 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.

Amazing. What should you do if you receive a debt collection letter for a debt that you don't owe?

That's my favorite type of FDCPA case debt that I never even heard of. All of a sudden I get a collection letter. They're trying to collect a debt that I don't owe. I dish it out to a consumer attorney. Why I don't have to pay them nothing out of pocket. They will, they will take on the case. They won't have to charge me. They can they it's fee shifting. So they'll look to the deck and they most times at this point I think I've sued most of the major debt collectors I know who I'M suing. It's usually going to be a lawyer that I already know and they're going to say, what's it going to take to make it go away? If it's a, if it's a case with merit and we get them back with our bottom line, they won't ever speak to you again. If they, if they know that you are represented by counsel, which I will do for you, they won't, they won't reach back out. And if they do, it's another violation of the fdcpa. That's another, that's another big case that we get is also I, we, in our, in our letters we sent, we say that we are represented by council and they get done anyways. They get called anyways. It's a FDCPA violation. So dish it off to an attorney. Please. Don't try to like figure it out yourself. Don't try to handle it yourself. We are here for you for that reason only. We're not looking to you for money. We're looking to the debt collectors to pay you.

Amazing. How can you tell if a debt collector owes you money?

If you never knew that the FDCPA existed or you didn't know that a debt collector can't call you at 9 o' clock at night, how would you have ever known? Right. If you look up the list, which is all out, it's all information that attorneys use search engine optimization to try to get you to see. Like it's not, it's not hidden anywhere the lists are available. You could just go down that list and say, wait a second, that's happened to me. It probably has. And you just didn't know that you could sue for it. Which is what I pride myself on. I'm the attorney that tells you about laws and rights that you did not know. You have things that you did not know you can sue for. And it's very readily available. It's on my website. It's on every lawyer's website. Because we want you to know. Because when you know, you will look for a lawyer that will press your rights and get you paid, but also sometimes even get the debt waived. That's something that we always ask for. If a debt collector owns a debt, if it's a debt buyer, we'll also try to get the debt waived so that you don't even have to pay the debt. It comes off your report. You can possibly get paid your FDCPA damages. All of our fees are usually covered. That's it.

Awesome. Now I'm Supposed to ask you about a debt collector hack and third party disclosure.

In regards to third party disclosure, a lot of the times is when they call your phone and somebody other than you picks up, they begin to ask, hey, I'm looking for so and so. This is in regard to a personal business matter. They're always going to start with this is in regard to a personal business matter. They're never going to say that we're looking to Mr. John Smith in regards to their AT&T debt. Because once anyone else other than you hears that your name is associated with this debt, we're looking at an FDCPA claim. If they call you and you don't even verify your identity and somehow they spill the beans about a debt, you could still possibly press FDCPA claims even if you're the one and they didn't get proper verification of your identity from you. Now that's something that all debt collectors have to follow. And they can also send emails to your friends about your debt or a lot of the times what I also see is when they call into people's works, it's usually not them picking up the phone. And when that's the case, that's the best type of case is when they call your work and then they say, in regard to a personal business matter, your boss is already scratching his head, wait, what is this about? And then they somehow spill the beans about a debt that you owe and your boss thinks now you're unreliable because you can't even pay your debts. That's definitely, it's not defamatory, but it's like it's particularly egregious that now your boss knows about your debt. That's exactly the type of thing that the Fair debt collection practices seeks to protect. And a lot of the times people don't even know when their family members or their friends are reached out to and pertaining to their debt because how would you know unless they came out and told you? When I talk about on social media, there's a whole influx of people. When some of my videos went super viral, there's a whole influx of people talking about weight. Someone called me about my, my, my brother or friend's debt and they then told their friends or their, whoever they were calling about this happened and now I know about it. And then people were able to sue so many debt collectors just because of that. So that's something that everybody should look out for. If somebody's calling you about someone else's debt, tell them, don't hide it, don't don't say, oh, it'd be super awkward. No, because that's going to help them out. One is it might help them get the debt waived completely, get them paid too. So don't ever hide that fact. I think that's the biggest hack to know is don't disregard a debt collection call and always kind of whenever, whenever you answer the phone, don't give your identity up right away. That, that should just be a standard rule. If you don't recognize the number and they say they're looking for such and such, you answer the phone and you don't say, oh yeah, this is him speaking. May I ask what this is about? You say, can I ask what this is about? Don't say anything. Don't reveal your identity to a number that you don't recognize on your phone. And that goes for debt collectors or anyone else, just for your security. That's the biggest hack I can give in regards to third party disclosures.

That's a great one. 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, actual damages. 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 are 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 a 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, no lender's 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 jury determines that. And that's why credit bureaus Are very afraid to get this all the way to trial because when you're in a jury pool of a bunch of people who this can also happen to and something oftentimes has happened to, they're ready to award crazy jury verdicts for cases like that. So keep denial letters. Keep. Keep all the. 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. It can't get anything, can't get any credit. Keep every. 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 all paid. That's what they're responsible for. In a case like these, attorneys fees are the responsibility of defendants in these cases.

Awesome. Awesome stuff. Well, I have so many questions to ask, but we're running short on time. Can I ask you some general credit repair questions?

Sure, sure.

Okay. Why should someone send a dispute letter through paper mail versus disputing online?

What I've seen online is sometimes the credit bureaus will have provisions under arbitration that if you choose to dispute through our portal, you are binding yourself through arbitration. And I've seen credit bureaus try to press out arbitration because immediately when we file a lawsuit, they come back and say, motion to compel arbitration. And I'm saying, wait a second, when did they sign up for arbitration? Oh, one, they disputed it online. They made an account with Experian or Equifax and they clicked on the arbitration button. So now you have to arbitrate this. And then I'm like, okay, now we're not dealing with a jury anymore. This is something that our arbitrator is probably going to have to. And we still fight that. We still fight the ability to arbitrary. But that's the biggest thing is when I. When they go through disputing online through the online portals, arbitration is just a pain in the butt. And no attorney wants to do that, especially when they dished out the filing fees. So if we could avoid that, awesome. The second reason is sometimes consumer attorneys like when things aren't fixed because then we could sue on it. And a lot of the times is what we see is when we send paper, paper disputes, they don't come back as fixed and it's fine. I mean, you're not expecting it to. And oftentimes when you do it online, they don't come back as fixed anyways. So now we can just sue either way. But I find it that more, more often than not, paper disputes allow you to write out exactly what you're trying to dispute so you can be as specific as you can. This account belongs to my brother. It's not mine. Please remove it. This is his social. This is my social. You're mixing files. They come back, they verified it as accurate. Now we can sue them online. Sometimes it gives you limited options about what you can type in, what boxes you can check. So I like to be as thorough as I can. I like to attach stuff sometimes online doesn't let you do that. I like to attach proof FTC reports, identity fraud, police reports. I like to attach statements from credit cards saying that this wasn't late and you're still reporting it as late. Stuff like that. So the flexibility that mail disputes lets me do is perfect. And then on top of that, we can send it certified and confirm that they received it.

Awesome. What are some top red flags to watch out for regarding credit report inaccuracies?

The biggest one we find is identity fraud. A lot of accounts reporting on a consumer's report that isn't theirs. Now people's mind jumps to identity fraud right away, but they don't realize when they have such a generic. I'm not saying people's names are generic because I'm going to get heat for that. My name is Saeed, technically Saeed Hussein. There's a million people named that. But what I actually found on my report specifically is my whole family's name the same thing. So my dad's reports were. Accounts were reporting on my report when I was a kid. I didn't know that was a claim, but now I do. But the biggest thing to check out for, look out for is don't assume that everything is identity fraud. What could be happening is someone else's information is reporting on your report, someone you might not even know. Especially when your name is like John Smith or something super, super, like super common. You know, some things to look out for to see if that's actually happening to you is look at what the bureaus are saying your aliases are or what they're saying your date of birth is. Or cross check your Social Security number, see if there's multiple. See like the addresses and make sure those are all yours because that's the telltale Sign of whether there's a mixed file case happening on your credit report, whether. Whether there's a case of missing mixing files. And if that's the case and you're disputing, you can't get it fixed. That's a big FCRA case that we sue for all the time. And it doesn't necessarily. We. Sometimes we think it's identity fraud, and then we'll tell our clients, hey, you might want to get a police report or FTC report. And they're doing all of that. Sometimes there's just no way to know until you sue them. So to be more safe than sorry is we tell our clients to do that, and then it turns out the bureau was just mixing it with somebody else. But either way, it's important to know to look for that, because someone who hasn't checked their credit reports in a really long time wouldn't even know that it's happening to them. Because there's nothing that seems off because they could still be accounts that are positively being paid and you won't think of. Or even if you have, like, alerts set on your phone to tell you when something is negative, you might never catch it because these are things that other people are paying that still make it look like you have a balance on your report because it's still an account that exists on your report, just not yours. So everyone should be attentive to what's reporting on the reports. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter if it's positive, doesn't matter if it's negative. You should just look to see if all the accounts are actually yours.

That's really good advice.

Yeah.

Hey, just for fun, your TikTok features some really unusual things that people can sue for. Can you share a couple examples and. And the legal principles behind them?

So a big Illinois law that a lot of people didn't know that they could sue for, and I filed class actions just specifically on this is whenever they go to wherever they get a job, if their employer takes their fingerprint to clock in and out of work and they never got their informed consent, that's a violation of the Biometric Information Privacy Act. And now there's some talk about over whether they can actually sue for Every time it's $1,000 every time they scan their fingerprint. So that could be like four or five times a day, times however many days that you've been on the job, times $1,000. So these things are getting sued in class action in Illinois for the past few years. And in Some other states might adopt that specific law. And that's. I'll be massive in the plaintiffs in the plaintiffs bar. Another type of case is if, like the, your credit card receipt that like you go, you swipe your card at Mariano's or, or Whole Foods, and your credit card receipt shows anything more than the last four digits of your credit card number. Like, let's say it shows the last eight digits. A lot of places have picked up on this because they don't want to get sued for it. But the law is called facto the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions act. And that lets you sue them for up to $1,500 per receipt that they printed. Another law that people didn't know that they could sue for is the telephone Consumer Protection Act. So these spam texts that you get, not necessarily spam, but it could also just be marketing. It could be like Pizza Hut sending you, hey, here's our super bowl deal, three pizzas for five bucks. And you text stop to opt out. It could be anywhere. You text stop to opt out. But they keep sending you these messages and you seem like there's just no way to opt out of this. You keep texting stop, but these messages keep coming through. You can sue for up to $1,500 per message you received after you texted stop to opt out. A lot of people don't know that. And this is another thing that we just sued for in class action where several hundred thousand dollars in a settlement because the place that we sued was sending these messages and our clients just couldn't opt out. And this was happening to so many other people. So it's like laws like this that people really, really eat up because they didn't know that their rights that people didn't know they have. And when people hear about the possibility of getting money out of it, they DM us and they try to hire us. A lot of it is we filter through because like the spam text law, for example, we're really just suing company. We're not suing scammers in whatever country. We're suing companies, legitimate companies. So we're not suing anybody that we were not even able to find. So people, people don't realize that. So we swift through a lot of junk to get to some. Some good cases.

Amazing. You're just a wealth of knowledge about this stuff. It's, it's really incredible. And I love that you've taken your law and now become so entrepreneurial with the TikTok and everything else, building this law firm. It's really, really incredible. You're really quite an entrepreneur.

Thank you so much. No, opportunities have kind of fell in my lap. I'm super grateful. I'm blessed to be in the position I'm in. Social media's honestly just changed my life, just getting out. I never thought I'd be one to get in front of a camera, but from that the opportunities have kind of the path's been made. Like now I get calls from HuffPost. I make videos for them. I make videos for Complex buzzfeed. I get on the news talking about things that are going on in the legal space, like consumer, like the bitba law specifically. I get. I talk about this stuff all the time writing articles too. So now I get poached about this stuff because people want my legal expertise. I just googled my name the other day. I'm like, I didn't even know a bunch of articles are citing what I'm talking about on TikTok. It's crazy.

Very, very cool. Because you're so entrepreneurial, what's one piece of advice you'd give someone who's starting their own business?

Oh, man. Just cross your T's, dot your I's, make sure that you have all your registrations in place. Hire a lawyer. Honestly, like, to really cover your ass. I don't even know if I'm allowed to say ass on here, but to really cover your butt, you want to make sure that you are legally shielded. A lawyer is going to help you do that. If they're expensive, talk to the right one. You'll be able to find one at a good cost. But ask around to see if you could get recommendations for a good one. But make sure that they're looking at everything you're doing, how your business is structured, the type of contracts you're putting in place, like even as a credit repair company and you're getting your clients under contract, have a lawyer look at that. You're probably not thinking of. There's probably a form out there, but tailor that form to what you want. Like you might have like an arbitration provision with your client. You don't even know what arbitration is. A lawyer can explain that to you. So I honestly, and I might sound biased just saying it, but really go with the lawyer. They're going to save you so much more money in the long run. And get. If you're going to do things right, if you're going to do things once, do it right. So people don't build businesses every day, but when you do, make sure that you're really, really careful. And the way to do it is to hire a lawyer.

That's great advice. Okay, before we wrap up, I want to switch gears real quick and ask you a few rapid questions. Just answer with the first word or phrase that pops in your head. Okay.

All right, let's do it.

What's your business?

Superpower Social media.

What does business ownership mean to you?

Money. No, just kidding. Helping people.

What drives and motivates you?

Money.

What's your definition of success?

I'm just kidding. I don't want to say money again. Retiring my parents.

And if you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Try to find another date. Another reality TV show that's not a dating show.

Hmm. And how can our audience reach out to you? I know they're going to want to.

So we are. We're still looking for credit repair companies to associate with. So we're on. We're on TikTok, Haseeb legal. We're on Instagram. Haseeb Legal. We have a website, haseeblegal.com shaseeblegal.com is my email address. My phone number's out there. It's 630-legal-27. You could reach out to us any way you want.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Hassib. This was a lot of fun. You're amazing.

Thank you so much. I hope to stay in touch.

We will, and I wish you continued success. And for everyone out there watching and listening, if you're finding value in the things we share on this podcast, click below to subscribe and follow. Also, give us a five star review or share the show and help us to change more lives. If you have a question or a comment, drop it down below because I read each and every one of them. I would love to hear from you and I'll respond as soon as I can. If you want to learn more about using the law to repair credit, check out my podcast, Consumer Law Credit Repair Powerful Dispute Method Explained. So take care, Credit Hero, and keep changing lives. Hey, everybody, it's Daniel again, and really quick. I'd like to invite you to join what I believe is the best thing we have ever created inside the credit repair cloud community. And it is a chance challenge that we call the Credit Hero Challenge. If you're just planning out your business or you're just getting it started and you dream of having a successful business of your own so you can quit your 9 to 5 and fire your boss and have financial freedom or so you can add another revenue stream to your existing business. If that's your dream, you need to get into this challenge. We created this challenge to help you to create and launch your very own credit repair business, to build a proper foundation for a really successful business. This challenge is going to help you to understand the strategy, the tactics, and all the things you need to be successful at credit repair. It really is the greatest thing we have ever built, and it will change your life. So I recommend you do it right now. Stop everything. Pause this audio, go online, and go to creditherochallenge. Com. That's creditherochallenge.com and join the next challenge. And there's a challenge that's starting in just a few days. So go get started right now@creditherochallenge.com.