Perma-Banned: The Debt Collectors Who Threatened Fake Arrests and Stole Money From People Who Didn’t Even Owe Them

A California operation with five fake company names spent years calling ordinary people and threatening them with arrest, criminal prosecution, and financial destruction. The federal government just shut them down permanently.

Filed June 2025 · Central District of California · FTC v. Blackrock Services, Inc.

A debt collection company threatened to have consumers arrested and criminally prosecuted for not paying debts that it had no legal authority to collect, and the federal government’s final court order confirms it had been doing this through a web of at least five fake corporate identities designed to look like real law firms and government offices.

Five Fake Companies. One Shakedown Machine.

The FTC’s complaint, filed February 24, 2025, named Blackrock Services, Inc. as the lead corporate defendant. But that was just the front door. Behind it sat four more entities operating as parts of the same machine: Liberty Credit Management, Inc., Civil Complaint Administration, Pacific Billing Solutions, and Cornerstone Legal Group, LLC. A sixth entity, Affiliated Billing Solutions, Inc., was also pulled into the receivership.

These names were chosen to intimidate. “Civil Complaint Administration” sounds like a government office. “Cornerstone Legal Group” sounds like a law firm. Neither was real in the way those names implied. The court order permanently bars the defendants from misrepresenting affiliation with any attorney or law firm, which tells you exactly what they were doing with those names.

Two individual defendants controlled all of it: Ryan Evans and Mitchell Evans. Their personal bank accounts at JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Vanguard, and Morgan Stanley’s E-Trade platform were all frozen and handed to a court-appointed receiver. Ryan Evans also ran accounts under names like “Ryan Evans d/b/a Civil Complaint Services,” “Ryan Evans d/b/a Cornerstone Legal Group,” and “Ryan Evans d/b/a Pacific Legal Group” — three more aliases for one person running a shakedown business out of what appears to be a single operation.

From Complaint to Permanent Ban in Under Four Months

The FTC filed its complaint on February 24, 2025. Three days later, on February 27, a judge issued an emergency order freezing all assets and appointing a receiver. On March 18, 2025, a preliminary injunction locked things down further. By June 2025, the permanent ban was entered. The speed of this action is notable: when the government actually moves on consumer fraud, it can move fast.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Measure

The court order describes a business model that turned fear into revenue. Consumers received calls from people claiming to be attorneys, or representatives of law offices, or agents of what sounded like a government civil complaint bureau. The fear was the product. The goal was to get someone on the phone, overwhelm them with legal-sounding threats, and extract payment before they could think clearly or ask questions.

According to the permanent injunction, Blackrock Services and its shell companies told consumers that nonpayment of a debt would result in their arrest, criminal prosecution, criminal conviction, or imprisonment. They told people that lawsuits had been filed, or would be filed. They claimed wages would be garnished, property would be seized. None of these threats were legally authorized. These were fabrications, delivered over the phone by people pretending to represent legal authority they did not have.

Many of the people targeted by this operation were likely dealing with financial stress already. The operation specifically collected “purported debts” — meaning the court’s own language acknowledges these were not necessarily real, verified obligations. A person in financial trouble gets a call from someone who sounds official, who says a lawsuit has been filed, who says the police could be involved. The psychological weight of that call, for someone already stretched thin, is not something a settlement check fixes.

They Didn’t Just Lie Once. They Built a System of Lies.

The court’s permanent prohibition on misrepresentations lists nine separate categories of lies this operation was running. They misrepresented whether consumers had any legal obligation to pay at all. They misrepresented the character, amount, and legal status of debts. They misrepresented that consumers were delinquent on payday loans. They impersonated attorneys. They claimed to be affiliated with law firms. And they made false statements to obtain consumers’ personal financial information, including credit card numbers, bank account numbers and routing numbers, and consumer credit reports.

This last point deserves to be read slowly. These callers talked their way into obtaining people’s bank account numbers and routing numbers. That is not a debt collection call. That is a financial predator extracting the keys to someone’s bank account. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act violations in this case aren’t technical compliance failures; they describe an operation that was actively harvesting people’s most sensitive financial credentials under false pretenses.

The court order also bans the defendants from threatening to report debts to credit bureaus as leverage, or promising to have debts deleted in exchange for payment. Both of these are documented tactics: threatening to destroy someone’s credit score if they don’t pay, or promising to “make it go away” if they do. For people trying to rent an apartment, finance a car, or qualify for a mortgage, a credit score threat carries enormous real-world consequences. This operation exploited that vulnerability deliberately and systematically.

The receiver — a professional appointed by the court to wind down the business — has been given 365 days to liquidate all assets of the Receivership Entities. Everything Ryan Evans and Mitchell Evans built to run this operation is now being dismantled under court supervision. Every account, every company, every piece of infrastructure. The receivership itself is a kind of accounting of what this operation actually was: not a debt collection business that broke some rules, but a multi-entity fraud apparatus that required a court-ordered demolition crew to dismantle.

Legal Receipts: Straight From the Court Order

“The Complaint charges that Defendants participated in deceptive and unlawful acts or practices that violate (1) Section 5(a) of the FTC Act; (2) multiple provisions of the FDCPA and its associated Regulation F; (3) Section 521 of the GLB Act; and (4) Section 461.3(a) of the FTC’s Trade Regulation Rule on Impersonation of Government and Businesses in connection with Defendants’ collection and attempted collection of purported debts.” — Stipulated Final Order, Findings Section, Paragraph 2

“Defendants, whether acting directly or through any other Person, are permanently restrained and enjoined from: A. Participating in Debt Collection Activities; and B. Advertising, marketing, promoting, offering for sale, selling, or buying any Consumer or commercial Debt or any information regarding a Consumer relating to a Debt.” — Stipulated Final Order, Section I: Ban on Debt Collection and Debt Brokering Activities

“Defendants are permanently restrained and enjoined from misrepresenting or assisting others in misrepresenting… That nonpayment of a Debt will result in a Consumer’s arrest, criminal prosecution, criminal conviction, or imprisonment; That nonpayment of a Debt will result in civil litigation against a Consumer, or in the seizure, garnishment, or attachment of a Consumer’s property or wages.” — Stipulated Final Order, Section II: Prohibition Against Misrepresentations, Subsections C and D

“Defendants are permanently restrained and enjoined from: Making any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation to any Person to obtain or attempt to obtain information of a Consumer, including, but not limited to, credit or debit card numbers, bank account numbers and routing numbers, and consumer credit reports.” — Stipulated Final Order, Section III: Injunction Relating to Consumer Financial Information, Subsection A

“Judgment in the amount of EIGHT MILLION, TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-EIGHT Dollars ($8,254,368) is entered in favor of the FTC against Defendants, jointly and severally, as monetary relief… for Defendants’ violations of the FDCPA, Regulation F, Section 521(a) of the GLB Act, and the Impersonation Rule.” — Stipulated Final Order, Section VI: Monetary Judgment and Partial Suspension, Subsection A

“The FTC’s agreement to the suspension of part of the judgment is expressly premised upon the truthfulness, accuracy, and completeness of Defendants’ sworn financial statements… If the suspension of the judgment is lifted, the judgment becomes immediately due as to that Defendant in the amount specified in Subsection VI.A above (which the parties stipulate, only for purposes of this Section, represents the consumer injury alleged in the Complaint).” — Stipulated Final Order, Section VI, Subsections E and G

The Judgment They Probably Won’t Pay in Full

The total judgment against Blackrock Services and its operators is $8,254,368 (roughly what 137 median American households earn in a year combined). But almost all of it was immediately suspended because the defendants claimed they have no money left. The actual cash Ryan Evans must pay within 180 days is just $80,000 (about what a single nurse earns in a year). The rest stays suspended unless the FTC proves they lied about their finances.

This is a structural problem in consumer fraud enforcement. Courts can only extract what defendants actually have. If the defendants truthfully reported that the money is gone, burned through the operation or simply spent, the victims of this scheme recover almost nothing. The FTC has the right to reopen the judgment if they find hidden assets, but tracking every dollar through a six-entity shell operation is exactly as hard as it sounds.

Societal Impact: Who Gets Hurt When Debt Collectors Go Rogue

Public Health: Fear as a Weapon Against Vulnerable People

The documented tactics in this case — threatening arrest, threatening criminal prosecution, threatening wage garnishment — do not land the same way on everyone. Research consistently shows that financial stress and legal threats produce acute anxiety and chronic health consequences, including disrupted sleep, elevated cortisol, and in extreme cases, cardiovascular harm. This operation targeted people already in financial distress and escalated that distress through fabricated emergencies.

The specific claim that nonpayment would result in arrest and criminal prosecution is particularly vicious. A single phone call containing that threat, received by someone with no legal knowledge, no money for a lawyer, and genuine anxiety about their financial situation, can destabilize a person’s life for days or weeks. Multiply that across the consumer base of a multi-entity debt collection operation, and the cumulative harm to mental health and daily functioning is enormous, even though it leaves no paper trail and counts for nothing in a financial judgment.

The FTC’s impersonation prohibitions in this order reveal that this company specifically weaponized the authority of the legal system — fake law firms, fake civil complaint offices — against people who already feel powerless when dealing with creditors. The entire architecture of the operation was designed to exploit a knowledge gap: that most people don’t know the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act exists, don’t know what debt collectors are legally allowed to say, and don’t know that threatening them with arrest for an unpaid credit card debt is a federal crime.

Economic Inequality: Predators Target the Already Struggling

The order specifically references payday loans as one category of debt these collectors were misrepresenting. Payday loan borrowers are overwhelmingly low-income Americans who have already been failed by the formal financial system. They pay triple-digit interest rates because they have no other options. A debt collector calling a payday loan borrower and threatening criminal prosecution is stacking a second predatory system on top of a first one.

The multi-account, multi-entity structure of this operation also reflects a deliberate attempt to prevent accountability while maximizing extraction. Ryan Evans operated accounts under at least four separate d/b/a names at JPMorgan Chase alone. Mitchell Evans had four separate accounts at Wells Fargo plus two at Vanguard. This is not the financial profile of a legitimate small business; this is the financial profile of a person actively moving money through structures designed to make it hard to trace and harder to seize. People with the means to build that infrastructure do not get threatened with fake arrest. They build the operation that does the threatening.

The $8,254,368 (enough to send roughly 275 students to a public university for one full year, covering tuition and living expenses) judgment represents what the FTC calculated as the consumer injury in this case. That figure is derived from actual money taken from actual people. The real economic harm to the people targeted, accounting for stress-driven financial decisions, payments made on debts that were never legally owed, and the cost of dealing with the fallout, is likely larger and entirely uncompensated by a judgment that has been largely suspended.

The Cost of Doing This Business

What Now: Names, Watchlists, and What You Can Do

What Debt Collectors Are Legally Forbidden From Doing to You

Under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), no debt collector can legally threaten you with arrest, claim to be a law firm if they aren’t, misrepresent the amount you owe, or use false pretenses to get your bank account information. If a caller does any of these things, you can file a complaint directly with the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and with the CFPB at consumerfinance.gov/complaint. You may also have the right to sue the collector directly under federal law.

The compliance monitoring provisions in this order are worth noting: the FTC retains the right to pose as consumers to check whether defendants comply, to pull their credit reports, and to demand sworn compliance reports for the next ten years. If you believe you were contacted by any of these entities, document everything: dates, caller names or titles used, exact language about legal threats, and any payments made. That documentation could be material to an ongoing federal investigation.

Organize locally. Community-level financial literacy about debt collection rights is one of the few tools ordinary people have against these operations before a federal agency finally shows up years into the abuse. Know your FDCPA rights. Share them. The people running this operation counted on their targets not knowing the rules. The most powerful thing you can do is make sure the people around you do.