Can Debt Collectors Steal Your Stimulus Check?

The coronavirus crisis is causing severe financial pain across the U.S., where tens of millions of people have lost their jobs and filed for unemployment benefits in just the past month. For those who have lost income, a federal stimulus check could be vital to their financial well-being right now.

Unfortunately, many people who were already having money troubles before the COVID-19 pandemic hit are now running into a new challenge with their stimulus payments. Debt collectors are rushing in to try to grab up those stimulus checks in order to satisfy people's past debts. Because of the way that lawmakers set up the stimulus check program, what those debt collectors are doing appears to be legal -- but it also threatens to undermine the entire point of the program, which was to rush cash to hard-hit Americans so that they could cover their current expenses during this crisis.

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