by Structured Settlement Watchdog
The common practice of scraping of court records by buyers of structured settlement payment rights, or those entities they purchase the information from, is at a fever pitch.
Competitive desperation to get to annuitants before rivals, coupled with the abject failure to instill regulatory control of the manner in which annuitants can be solicited, has led to some alarming business practices which include strangers showing up at the door unannounced.
Parents, imagine your innocent young children are playing on the lawn and some unsavory character shows up on your property, bearing lollipops, and wants to know when Mommy and/or Daddy are coming home. In 2014, when there are stories of people getting stabbed over a song selection on a juke box, or failure to bring the right lunch home, or for listening to the Eagles, is this acceptable? Perhaps it is time to revisit the "don't talk to strangers" caveat.
"Bait" Checks and Badger Calls
Another settlement purchaser is purportedly sending checks for $2,500 
as
"bait" to structured settlement annuitants apparently scraped from court records and then badgering
the annuitants to cash the checks in an effort to bind them to the settlement purchaser.
The story unfortunately does not end there folks. Stay tuned
Dangers Lurk in the State of Florida
If you are a Florida resident and have been solicited to sell your structured settlement by someone who just showed up at your door who enticed you to sell, or is enticing you to sell your structured settlement and give up your long term security with promises of "guaranteed" returns north of 10% please contact us.
While Florida is the home to many settlement purchasers, Florida is a VERY DANGEROUS state for structured settlement annuitants because at the time of posting, an in-person examination of the annuitant by a judge before a structured settlement transfer at an approval hearing, is not required.
This is a serious flaw in the Florida statute, in my opinion, because it allows the possibility of a transfer being concluded that is clearly not in the annuitant's best interest and that of his or her dependents. I have first hand knowledge of such a case. The interview by a judge, while time consuming, serves as a necessary check and balance to protect unsophisticated people from becoming victims. In the case I have knowledge of, in my opinion, if the judge interviewed the "seller" she never would have approved the transfer because the transfer was so clearly not in the annuitant's best interest. The system as it currently exists, at time of posting, assumes that judges are up to the task and unfornately some judges clearly are not.
Florida poses significant risk for structured settlement annuitants where the judge does not perform a thorough in-person examination of the annuitant by a before approving a structured settlement transfer.
The Cedric Martez Thomas and James McMillan cases are examples of New Yorkers getting "gatored".
What is the point of a system that fails people?