Upstate Law Group's Participation in Pension Assignment Operation Exposed by Newspaper

The Charleston (South Carolina) Review and Courier has posted an investigative piece describing the relationship of a South Carolina Law Firm, the Upstate Law Group, in a pension assignment operation.  The article is available online here.

The names of the companies selling the pension assignments changed over the years, but the participation of Upstate Law Group remained constant.  Why this case has not been referred to the United States attorney for criminal RICO action is beyond me.

Here's the beginning part of the article.  To read the whole thing, you will have to go to the Review and Courier site:

For nearly seven years, a small South Carolina law firm helped operate a nationwide scheme that preyed on desperate military veterans, misled investors and netted millions of dollars in allegedly illegal profits.
The Upstate Law Group, with its office in Pickens County, worked with a network of salesmen to lure in cash-strapped veterans and convince them to sign over their monthly pensions and disability payments.
The businesses then persuaded retirees to invest in the federal benefit payments, promising up to an 8 percent return on their money.

The veterans received a lump-sum payout for handing over several years of future income to the investors. The upfront cash came at a steep cost.
The problem is the entire arrangement is illegal, according to state and federal authorities. Federal law prohibits veterans from assigning their pension or disability payments to another person.
That didn’t stop Candy Kern-Fuller, owner of the Upstate Law Group. Since 2012, she helped her associates sell the military benefit contracts across the country.
The name at the top of the paperwork changed over the years: Voyager Financial Group, SoBell Corp., BAIC Inc., Performance Arbitrage Company and Life Funding Options.
But the system continued.
Using websites, the string of companies persuaded veterans from states as far flung as Florida, Idaho, Texas, Alaska and Michigan to sign over their benefits. And they peddled those supposedly “secured” payments to retirees in places like Nevada, New York, Arizona, Tennessee and California.
The scope of the operation is staggering. Records obtained by state regulators show the companies lured in hundreds of veterans and pocketed millions of dollars in fees, which they siphoned off the top of each deal.
The Upstate Law Group effectively served as the banker, legal counsel and debt collector for the operation — offering an air of legitimacy to the scheme.

About 5 years ago, I sued Upstate Law Group on behalf of a client who got involved with a Voyager Financial Group pension. I wrote about it at the time, and since then I have helped a number of people who were victimized by pension assignments without filing litigation.  In the early suit, Upstate Law Group's defense boiled down to an argument that their involvement in collecting the pension assignment was an isolated incident.  I didn't think that was true at the time, and it is clearly not true now.  We were able to get that case resolved to my client's satisfaction without digging into the details.

What I didn't know until I read this article today was that Upstate Law Group actually sued a number of the pensioners in Greenville County, South Carolina. In my opinion, this is a violation of the venue provisions of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.  The problem is, that when people stop paying on these obligations without a lawyer, they can be targeted, and they may not be able to find a South Carolina lawyer to get the case dismissed.

I urge anyone who is ceasing payments on a pension assignment contract to consult with a lawyer and have the lawyer write the letter stating that you are ceasing payments as a matter of right.  If you have a lawyer, your lawyer should know what to do if you are sued in the wrong forum.