Afni Collections Received Collection Notice from Afni Collections; Its completely false and a fraud. Bloomington Illinois

Hello everyone. I'm very upset but I'm taking a down time to write this letter/complaint so I can let others know what Afni Collections is doing. I've noticed that me and my family am not the only one who is trying to be scammed.

Well, My parents received a letter, collection notice, today from Afni Collections stating that my dad owes almost $12,000. I immediately called them to see what was going on. I was connected to a lady that said this is for a main landline phone that was connected in the Bronx, NYC in 1997.

Granted we did live in NYC at one point but that was almost 20+ years ago and it was in Brooklyn, NYC anyway! The lady had my dads full name and social security number. I think she even had his full date of birth. I remember she told us the year but I can't remember if she gave us the month/day.

After talking to the lady for some time, she told us that this phone number was used mainly as an number to make international calls. We tried to get more information about this (where were the international calls made too) but she said she did not have that information about where the calls where made to.

She did give us the complete the address of where this phone number was located.

Also the original creditor is a phone company that is no longer operating and was brought out by Verizon and then Verizon sold/gave this apparent debt to Afni Collections.

I have no idea why they are doing this to my dad. My father always pays his bills on time and has a spotless credit report.
He never lived in the bronx and in the year that this supposed account was started, we were living in Herndon, Virginia already.

After doing some research on this site and on google, I have learned that we are not the only people with this problem...The Better Business Bureau has Afni Collections listed as a company with them with a Satisfactory record. How is that possible when Afni Collections has so many complaints against them??

I also read that we need to write a letter to Afni Collections stating that we want a Valdiation of Debt and to also do a credit report check to see if they reported this. The lady from Afni Collections said it had not been reported yet but a friend of mine said they probably can not report it because its been more than 7yrs and its past the Statue of Limitations. My friend also told me that when I run the credit checks to ask them to put a Fraud Alert on my parents account.

This is all very upsetting to my parents because they are the kind of people who hate to have any type of bills and/or owe any money to anyone. They understand that its neccessary to have certain bills but they are not the type of people to have credit card bills and/or have outstanding debts with companies, etc.

It has been suggested by friends that I should get a lawyer and that maybe I could do a countersuit against them but I do not know if this is possible.

Well, If anyone has any suggestions/advice on what else I could do or the proper steps but from reading what people have done I think I know what to do. I just hope that I write the validation of debt letter correctly. I did not see an example of one. I hope that I can make this problem go away.

Fernando
Leesburg, Virginia
U.S.A.