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NEW YORK (AP) — Employees of a Georgia debt collection agency were coached to threaten people with arrest to get them to pay money they sometimes did not owe, authorities said Tuesday as they announced charges against seven individuals.

The company, Williams Scott & Associates LLC in the Atlanta suburb of Norcross, was shut down earlier this year after the Federal Trade Commission brought a civil action.

Federal prosecutors in New York wrote in court papers that the firm bullied people in all 50 states from 2009 through April, collecting more than $4 million from over 6,000 victims.

According to a criminal complaint, the employees falsely claimed they worked for, or were in contact with, the Justice Department, the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI and sheriffs’ departments. It said victims were falsely told they would be arrested if they did not call back or pay specified amounts immediately.

Investigators say some of the debts were real, but some weren’t.

The court papers said the company’s employees tried to create an appearance of legitimacy by routinely using legal terminology, inventing “legitimate-sounding, but completely bogus, explanations for the supposed imminent arrest of the victims.”

Sometimes, the employees told victims that the “statute of limitations” on their “civil legal rights” had expired and thus their debt was now a criminal matter that could only be resolved through payment of the debt or arrest, the court papers said.

The employees also sent documents meant to look like they were sanctioned by the government, it added. In one instance, a victim received a document containing the seal of the U.S. Department of State with language underneath saying: “Warrant Services Association, A Division of the Federal Government Task Force,” the papers said.

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