讨债者的恐吓策略讨出人命

Here's how debt collectors are supposed to treat you on the phone. "I want to inform you and I am obligated to inform you that this is an attempt to collect the debt."

This is how they're not. "Stanley McLeod, you need to call Green Tree and get your act together and make your payments on your mortgage and quit playing these games."

Diana McLeod says the call is one of hundreds his husband got before he died of heart failure.

"How many phone calls a day would you get?"

"Six, seven, it might have been more."

McLeod is now suing Green Tree Servicing LLC with using harassing tactics that broke Florida law, and she claims, led to her husbands' death.

"The stress just built up within, he had trouble sleeping, not eating well, the stress was getting worse and worse for him."

The company's General Counsel told cnn, "The collection activity did not lead to his death. The claim is meritless. We deny that the content, the number or the timing of the calls had anything to do with him dying in 2005."

After a heart attack and continuing heart problems, Stanley was on disability in 2002. The McLeods fell behind about three months on the mortgage payments. The calls began. This one after explaining to the collector he had been life-flighted to the hospital.

"Why don't you have that helicopter pick you up and bring that payment to the office?"

Scare tactics, charges McLeod's attorney Billy Howard. "That's how this mafia-like tactics result in so much money. People are scared."

Howard says this is not an isolated incident. He's got hundreds of cases involving other clients. Now how would you feel if you got a call like this: "When I see you, I'm going to f*** you up. I want my money and I want it now." Or this one: "You haven't heard the last of me and if it takes me a year or takes me two, believe me, I'll find you."

"We want them gone, we want all of them gone." Anna Inglett runs a debt collection agency. She says collectors breaking the law should be prosecuted. "Tell you sometimes the industry is penalized for a few bad apples. We’ve tried very hard and here in our firm, we absolutely make sure that we are in compliant."

With the recession, the number of people in debt is going up, as does the number of complaints against debt collection agencies. According to the Federal Trade Commission, between January and June of this year, they received 45,000 complaints, that's up more than 20% over the same period last year. But the FTC has only one case pending. Referring most complaints to the state for legal action to protect consumers, attorney say if you get harassing messages, do what Stanley McLeod did: save the tapes. John Zarrella, cnn, Tampa.