A New York City official who earned millions of dollars collecting debts for predatory lenders has agreed to resign, Bloomberg News reported. The city’s Department of Investigation said yesterday that Marshal Vadim Barbarovich would step down after the agency concluded he had violated debt-collection rules and was “untruthful” with investigators. Rather than defend himself in a removal proceeding, Barbarovich agreed to begin winding down his operation and to resign completely by March. Barbarovich made $1.7 million in 2017 and $1.9 million in 2018, making him the top earner not just among New York’s 35 marshals but across all of city government. Marshals are appointed by the mayor but don’t draw a salary. They work for landlords and creditors and compete with each other for business, collecting fees for towing cars, evicting tenants and enforcing civil judgments. It’s a system that dates to Dutch colonial days. Barbarovich operates from a third-floor office in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay neighborhood, overseeing a roomful of clerks. Although the marshals’ jurisdiction ends at the city’s limits, a loophole has allowed Barbarovich and a few of his peers to collect cash-advance debts nationwide. To grab money from a small business in Florida or Texas, they simply demand the funds from the business’s bank account by serving one of the bank’s New York locations. It’s unclear if such requests for out-of-state cash have any legal authority, but banks typically comply without question.
