In recent news it was revealed that powerful prosecutors in Louisiana and Washington made announcements of actions they had obtained against debt collection agencies and their owners and managers.

In the counties of Butler and Hamilton, Ohio, the sheriff’s departments attempted to obtain money from inmates to pay for the cost of their stay at jail. An all around failure, the program closed a few weeks ago after it cost taxpayers $69,000 to settle a federal lawsuit. The state auditor halted the program because it was not making any income.

In today’s recession the changes seem overwhelming. Just last year some tax laws were created to bail us out of dire situations. These are a few new tax laws that you should know about.

The debt collection companies have begun proceedings against former builder Boaz Yona, who hasn’t been paying compensation to home-buyers left without a roof or money when his construction company Heftsiba collapsed. Yona was convicted in November 2008 of a bunch of offenses, including fraud, and theft, which left many apartment buyers without their money and the home they’d paid for.

At a press conference Tuesday in Buffalo, N.Y., New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that his office has shut down a debt collection operation in Western New York that included at least nine collection agencies owned by Tobias Boyland.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced late Tuesday that his office has reached a deal with three Western New York debt collection agencies whereby the businesses will pay a total of $245,000 in penalties and costs and agree to modify some of their collection techniques.

A Grand Jury in Suffolk County, Mass. yesterday returned indictments against the president of a collection agency for allegedly stealing millions of dollars worth of excise taxes from the City of Boston.

Last month, Manuel and Luz Fausto won one of the largest collection awards documented in the last couple of years under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) against Credigy Services Corporation. A California jury awarded the Faustos $500,000 in damages stemming from harassment by Credigy collectors. Of the sum, granted $100,000 was for actual damages the Faustos experienced, while $400,000 was in punitive damages, granted for malicious and reckless disregard of the couples rights. According to one of the Faustos lawyers, David Humphreys of Humphreys Wallace Humphreys, P.C., and the case stemmed from a debt on a Wells Fargo charge card opened in 1992.

Debt collectors could be dealing with stricter regulations on their ability to collect money if bills proposed by the governor and New York state Assembly ever get passed by the state Senate. Before the state Senate went into a terminal impasse, the state Assembly passed a series of laws aimed at cutting down on debt collector abuses that include threatening phone calls, harassment and intimidation. In addition, Gov. David Paterson has proposed similar measures to protect the public from abusive consumer debt collection practices.

A Debt consolidation program starts with assessing your financial state of affairs. This formula involves an in depth analysis of your financial bearings. That analysis will assist you to evaluate whether it is best to file for bankruptcy or go for a debt consolidation program. A debt consolidation analysis will approximate the debtor’s potential savings through the program.