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mahatmakanejeeves

(56,892 posts)
Tue Nov 27, 2018, 03:27 PM Nov 2018

Meet New York City's highest-earning official. He's a debt collector for predatory lenders.

David Fahrenthold Retweeted

"Barbarovich is a city marshal. In an archaic system dating to colonial New Amsterdam, he’s one of 35 mayoral appointees who compete for fees recovering debts." This @business series should win some awards ->



Meet New York City’s highest-earning official. He’s a debt collector for predatory lenders.

By Zachary R. Mider and Zeke Faux
November 27, 2018

In the 1960s, New York’s loan sharks would send thugs with nicknames like “Jimmy Dimps” to beat up borrowers who fell behind on their payments. ... Now predatory lenders have a quieter way of collecting debts: an obscure city official named Vadim Barbarovich. Armed with a badge and a stack of court papers, he empties peoples’ bank accounts nationwide and keeps a cut for himself. He earned $1.7 million last year, giving him the most lucrative job in New York City government.

Barbarovich is a city marshal. In an archaic system dating to colonial New Amsterdam, he’s one of 35 mayoral appointees who compete for fees recovering debts. Marshals mostly evict tenants and tow cars, but Barbarovich and a few others have become cogs in a debt-collection machine that has crushed thousands of small businesses. They use their legal authority on behalf of lenders who charge more than some mafia loan sharks once did. ... In theory, Barbarovich’s reach ends at the city limits. In practice, it spans the nation. From a third-floor office near Coney Island in Brooklyn, he has grabbed cash from a physician in California, a roofer in Florida and a cattle auctioneer in Illinois. Borrowers say he and other marshals routinely push the limits of their authority.
....

When lenders claim borrowers have fallen behind, they often call in the marshals. Their job is to force banks to hand over whatever cash is left. They do it not with their fists, but with a court order rubber-stamped by a clerk and obtained without going before a judge. Most banks comply quickly, without checking if the marshal has a right to grab the funds. The borrower often doesn’t know what’s happening until the money is gone.

Before Barbarovich, 47, became a marshal, he worked in property control at Brooklyn’s SUNY Downstate Medical Center, where he never made more than $70,000 a year and sometimes volunteered as a Russian translator. When he started as a marshal in 2013, he pursued a traditional mix of work, targeting deadbeat tenants and parking scofflaws, earning $90,191 in his first full year, city records show. His income skyrocketed when cash-advance companies discovered his power. Lawyers and debt advisers say Barbarovich is the industry’s go-to legal enforcer. By last year, his earnings had increased almost 20-fold, even after he put his daughter and father on his payroll.
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