The road to justice can sometimes be long, winding, and tedious, but we can take comfort knowing that sometimes bad things do happen deservedly to bad people. Think of the hanging of outlaws in the Old West or hot wax being poured on Dr. Phibes.
Sometimes, big, dirtbag corporations run by corrupt ethical crooks get their comeuppance, or at the very least a judge rules that said corporation has to face said comeuppance in a court of law. One such trial (hopefully soon to be trials) I’m looking forward to with relish is the reckoning faced by the unbelievably slimy student loan servicer otherwise known as Navient. My wife and I call it “Deviant.”
Back in March, a judge in Washington State handed down a ruling in a lawsuit that the state’s attorney general has been pushing against Navient since 2017. The verdict stated that Navient, among other transgressions, violated the Consumer Protection Act and deceived its customers on the finer points of its cosigner policies. While the Washington State Attorney General’s claims were not all resolved in this ruling, a full trial is scheduled for the spring of next year.
What’s more, Washington State is not the only place where this cesspool of a company is in hot water. Just days ago, a New Jersey judge ruled against Navient’s efforts to dismiss a class action lawsuit brought on by a group of borrowers who allege that Navient misallocated payments to extend the life of the loans they hand out.
These developments are relatively new, but Navient’s mean streak is more than a mile wide and goes back years.
In 2015, the Department of Justice reached a settlement with Navient that saw the wretched company pay back $60 million in compensation to more than 77,000 service members who had been charged excess interest. Can anything be more low than taking advantage of the men and women who defend our country? Disgusting. One would think that all private citizens would have a little more respect for the people who put their lives on the line for us regular citizens, but this is the same company that likes to pickpocket teenagers going off to college, so why should they care about our service men and women?
After all, it’s not like the military fights for the freedoms of the same crooks who run Navient.
Likewise, Navient’s own shareholders lost patience with the company in 2016 and filed a class action suit. The lawsuit alleged that even as its market value dropped, Navient was misleading investors on financial reports. Given that Navient seems fine lying to shareholders, it’s no wonder they have zero compunction about lying to kids and their parents. The Internet is filled with stories of parents being taken advantage of by Navient.
Perhaps most despicably, this fraud of a company has the gall to pursue loans that were taken out by people who have since passed away before their time.
You read that correctly: in 2018, The Guardian reported that Navient had sent bills for collection to the guarantors and family members of a student who tragically died in a car accident years earlier. Despite maintaining a policy of debt forgiveness for unforeseen circumstances, for some reason Navient still felt compelled to chase after this poor kid’s family for money. I doubt it was the only instance of this disgusting and vile practice.
Can you imagine anything more embarrassing than the employees of Navient/Deviant having to put in their obituaries they worked there? The obituary just might read, “And the deceased also worked for the Navient scumbag corporation.”
Navient has only existed for a few short years, ever since it split from Sallie Mae back in 2014. Yet in that time, it’s proven itself more than capable of ruining lives and rubbing salt in old wounds.
This company is responsible for the loans of millions of students across the United States. But the blatantly obvious disregard it demonstrates toward its customers is almost admirable, that is, if you’re a systemic criminal like Al Capone. The fact it holds the financial fortunes of so many young people in its hands is downright frightening.
Thankfully, attorneys general in multiple states are taking action, and strong litigation against Navient seems to be on the horizon. My fervent hope is that every judge and every jury across this great land sees the sense to treat Navient like the evil institution it is and throw the book at the amoral sociopaths who run that company for a living. The sooner Navient is run into the ground, the better.