Daily Digest - February 17, 2026

🎂Happy Birthday to the following: Lorne Wood of Cloud Tech Gurus, Kelly Paul of TrueAccord, Kimberly Stone of KLS Financial Services, and Joann Needleman of Clark Hill.

🎉Congratulations for starting new positions: Jim Wilhelm as the new Director of Strategic Partnerships at Balto.

Suit Accuses Collector of Threatening to Sue, Leaving VM for Plaintiff’s Mother

• A debt buying organization and a collection operation are facing claims they violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and state law in Texas over attempts to collect a debt that included “threats” to file a lawsuit against the plaintiff — even though it has never done so — and leaving a voicemail for the plaintiff’s mother, which run counter to what the defendants say on their websites about their collection practices.

• More details here.

• This series is sponsored by WebRecon

A MESSAGE FROM TCN

TODAY’S WEBINARS

UPCOMING WEBINARS

Maryland Lawmakers Introduce ID Theft/Coerced Debt Bill

• A coerced debt collection bill has been introduced in the Maryland legislature that would create a new legal framework for how creditors and collectors must respond when a consumer claims a debt was incurred through identity theft or coercion. The proposal would give consumers a formal process to dispute alleged identity theft debt, require creditors to pause collection activity while an investigation is conducted, and expose creditors to damages and attorney’s fees if they fail to follow the required procedures.

• More details here.

Judge Rejects ‘Futility’ Theory in Credit Reporting Lawsuit

• To have standing means to have suffered a concrete injury. But what about if you knew that any attempt at obtaining credit would be futile. Isn’t that enough? A District Court judge in New York said it isn’t enough, granting a motion to dismiss filed by two defendants in a Fair Credit Reporting Act lawsuit.

• More details here.

Voice Is Becoming the New Front Door for AI and What That Means for Credit & Collections

• Voice is quickly emerging as the next major interface for artificial intelligence, and the shift is already reshaping how technology companies build products and how enterprises will interact with consumers. Speaking at Web Summit in Doha, ElevenLabs co founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski said voice models have moved beyond simple speech mimicry and are now working alongside large language models that can reason, understand context, and respond naturally. That vision helped fuel ElevenLabs recent $500 million raise at an $11 billion valuation, and it is increasingly shared by OpenAI, Google, and Apple as they push voice deeper into phones, wearables, vehicles, and always on devices.

• More details here.

Judge Finds No Actionable Injury in Unlicensed Rent Collection Case

• A District Court judge in Maryland has granted a motion for summary judgments filed by a pair of landlords who were sued for violating state collection laws in the state, ruling the plaintiffs lacked standing to pursue the lawsuit that accused the defendants of attempting to collect rent without having the proper license to do so.

• More details here.

WORTH NOTING: A medical price transparency bill has been introduced in the Wisconsin legislature and it includes a debt collection provision ... What you need to know if you want to start investing in gold ... A look at the credit card landscape ... A state-by-state look at where many of your favorite movie scenes were filmed ... Curling was already exciting to watch, and now there is a scandal to make things even more interesting ... California has announced a mortgage relief plan ... It's not just AI that is hallucinating ... What to do when bullying happens at work.

Trailer Tuesday, part I

Trailer Tuesday, Part II

Monday’s webinar recap will be published tomorrow. Sorry for any inconvenience.

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The Daily Digest is sponsored by TCN