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It was an ordinary Friday. Courtney Brown, 24, of Kalamazoo, Mich., was busy looking for a job. "I've applied all kinds of places," she says. "Wal-Mart, Target, Verizon Wireless."

Then she got a strange letter in the mail. " 'We are writing you with good news,' " she reads to me over the phone. " 'We got rid of some of your Everest College debt. ... No one should be forced to mortgage their future for an education.' "

The letter went on to say that her private student loan from a for-profit college, in the amount of $790.05, had just been forgiven outright by something called the Rolling Jubilee.

Since November 2012, Rolling Jubilee has purchased and eradicated about $15 million worth of debt arising from unpaid medical bills. Today, the group announced that it has erased $3.9 million in private student loans, including Courtney Brown's and those of almost 3,000 other students of the for-profit Everest College.

Rolling Jubilee is a project of a group of economic activists called Strike Debt, which formed out of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The group timed today's announcement for the third anniversary of that protest. The word "jubilee" refers to a time decreed in the Bible, every 49th year, when all debts were ritually forgiven, and slaves and prisoners freed.

"Some debts are just, and others are unjust," Thomas Gokey, one of Strike Debt's organizers, says, explaining the group's stance. "Providing affordable, publicly financed, world-class education is a moral debt we are failing to pay."

Rolling Jubilee's tactic takes advantage of a peculiar characteristic of modern debt. When people stop paying, debts become delinquent. The original owner, say a bank, eventually writes the debts off and sells them off at bargain-basement prices to third-party collectors.

Rolling Jubilee has managed to step in instead and buy some of this secondary market debt, using donations raised online — in this case, buying student loan debt for less than 3 cents on the dollar. But instead of trying to collect this debt, the group makes it disappear.

More than 40 million Americans now have some form of student loan debt, totaling an estimated $1.2 trillion. The amount erased by Rolling Jubilee, and the number of students helped, will not make a practical dent in that sum. "It doesn't solve the problem," says Gokey.

Instead, what he and the group's members are trying to do is draw attention to the plight of millions of people with unpaid student loans, especially high-interest private loans from relatively expensive for-profit colleges.

"They're the worst of the worst," says Gokey. The next step, he says, is to organize large numbers of people to press for policy changes that would allow debtors to be released from obligations they can't meet. Currently, student loans are nondischargeable in bankruptcy under most circumstances.

When Brown first got the letter from the Rolling Jubilee, it sounded like "a scam" — too good to be true. "I was in shock," she recalls. But after speaking to Gokey, "it made me feel better."

Brown says she had nearly completed a one-year program to become a dental assistant when Everest College assigned her to an internship in Battle Creek, Mich., about a 30-minute drive from her home.

"I had no transportation to Battle Creek. I asked them to find me a program closer, but with that type of internship you have to go out and find your own. And I didn't have those kinds of connections." As a result, she had to drop out of the program and, unemployed, found herself unable to pay her loans.

The for-profit college industry as a whole has come under increased scrutiny for its disproportionate contributions to the $1.2 trillion in student loan debt. While enrolling about 13 percent of students, who tend to be first-generation working adults, for-profits are responsible for a little under half of student-loan defaulters.

Strike Debt targeted Corinthian Colleges — the company that owns Everest College and two other for-profit college chains — deliberately. As NPR Ed previously reported, Corinthian Colleges is in the process of selling off most of its campuses.

Corinthian was already facing severe financial trouble when the Department of Education placed a hold on financial-aid payments to the company over the summer, because of a failure to satisfy some requests for information.

Corinthian Colleges has some 200 lawsuits pending against it for allegedly fraudulent practices. This includes a case brought by the California attorney general for violations of consumer protection and securities laws.

Yesterday, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau announced yet another lawsuit against the company, this time for alleged predatory lending. The federal agency seeks relief for borrowers, saying the company misled students about job prospects, pressured them to take out high-interest private loans, and then used aggressive debt-collection tactics.

Company officials have defended their practices.

"Students who continue to study at our schools do so because there is clear, independent evidence that they receive a quality education," Kent Jenkins Jr., a Corinthian spokesman, told NPR Ed. He forwarded the company's official response to the California allegations, which said the complaint "paints a misleading and inaccurate picture of our schools."

Everest College and the other Corinthian colleges aren't officially shutting down. In fact, Everest is still recruiting and enrolling students as it searches for a buyer for its campuses. The decision of the Department of Education to allow most of the campuses to keep operating under new management also means borrowers, not the government or lenders, are still on the hook for those loans.

But not the lucky ones, like Brown. The weekly calls from debt collectors will stop. And, she says, she will soon be able to continue her job search without worrying that a hiring manager will see a ding on her credit report.

"I feel better knowing that it's off," she says. "I feel like I can do something better with myself."

It started with the iPod. In 2001, Apple promised to do away with stacks of CDs and put 1,000 songs in your pocket. Thirteen years later, the music industry is unrecognizable: Most brick-and-mortar record stores have closed, and a pocket-size hard drive filled with music seems quaint in a world with YouTube and Spotify.

We didn't know it at the time, but the introduction of the iPod began Apple's shift from Macs to consumer electronics, which resuscitated the ailing computer-maker's fortunes and helped transform it into the world's most valuable company.

Next on Apple's list of industries to shake up is something much more basic: how we pay for things countless times a day. Apple is taking aim at what's in our wallet. Our cash and credit cards, as well online shopping.

Apple Pay uses what's known as a near-field chip to communicate with payment sensors at store checkouts. It works with Touch ID, a system built into recent iPhones that uses your fingerprint as a pass code. And Apple Pay promises to make transactions more secure at a time when major retailers, including Target and Home Depot, have reported massive breaches of their payment systems.

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Apple's foray into e-payments was predicted long ago, and it is not the first phone-maker to get into it. Windows and Android phones already have NFC chips for payments. But they haven't caught on.

John-Kurt Pliniussen, associate professor of Internet marketing and innovation at Queens School of Business in Ontario, says Apple's entry into e-payments means magnetic strip credit and debit cards are now "state of the ark" — about as relevant as Noah's floodworthy vessel.

"The question is how quickly this will dominate the world, because it will," Pliniussen says.

Apple has built its corporate empire by making money off apps, music and devices. That got us thinking: What's Apple Inc. going to get out of Apple Pay?

iWant

Susan Crawford, an Internet policy expert and visiting professor at Harvard Law School, sees the payment system as a way of locking in increased loyalty for already adoring Apple fans. If Apple can leverage its customers' pre-existing trust to help consumers jump over their privacy concerns associated with e-payments, she says, the company may have made one more reason for users to keep their iPhones clutched tightly in their hand at all times.

"Really this is all about affection for these devices, which are literally very close to people's hearts," Crawford says.

Ryan McInerney, president of Visa, framed Apple Pay as a win-win for both Apple and credit card companies. "Buying things on your mobile phones is not as easy as it should be," he says. Apple "wants to engage their customers on their devices as much as possible."

Card companies think that keeping your beloved, trusted phone in your hand longer, and closer to your heart, means you'll spend more money with it — that's good for Apple and good for Visa, MasterCard and the like.

Swipe Fees

Apple reportedly negotiated a cut from the "swipe fees" that card companies charge merchants when you use your card, but Visa's McInerney would not comment on what, if any, agreements were made.

It's not likely we will hear an official statement on how much Apple is getting each time a consumer taps a phone on a sensor. Credit card swipe fees are something of a trade secret for companies like Visa and MasterCard — a class-action lawsuit that alleged swipe fee price fixing was settled in 2012.

Many retailers say the fees are still too high. Wal-Mart is suing Visa after opting out of the settlement.

Apple Has Your Credit Card Number

Apple already has what analysts believe is the largest cache of consumer credit card numbers in the world. In a conference call with investors this April, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company had 800 million iTunes accounts, the majority of which had active credit cards stored on them. (That's up from 575 million in June 2013.)

For new Apple Pay users, the default payment will be the card that is already stored in their iTunes account. That's one less hoop for consumers to jump through before they can start tapping and buying.

Security

In the past, Apple succeeded in making money by presenting more attractive alternatives to industries under attack. In 2001, the music industry was battered by music-sharing services like Napster. The iTunes Store's growing clout forced companies to play with Apple and agree to its payment scheme.

Today, credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard are scrambling to implement PIN verification systems to respond to repeated massive breaches of consumer data.

Credit card transaction fees differ based on whether a card is "present" or "not present." This means that buying something online assesses a higher fee as a type of insurance to hedge against the increased risk of fraud in online transactions.

In his keynote address Tuesday, Cook made the security argument by saying the magnetic stripe and 16 digits of plastic credit cards are "outdated and vulnerable."

Cook also noted the vast sum of money Apple could potentially dip into: $4 trillion per year charged to credit and debit cards in the U.S. alone.

Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer at MasterCard, also hinted that security was a key appeal. "We see value being generated in many ways," McLaughlin says, including "fraud that can be eliminated."

But Crawford, the Internet policy expert, is not so sure the win-win is a permanent win for Visa, MasterCard and the others. "[Credit card companies] are powerful enough that Apple needs them more right now than they need Apple," she says. "But the tables may turn as Apple becomes more like a card processing network."

Indeed, Cook hinted at the company's ambitions in an interview with ABC News. When asked whether Apple had killed the credit card, Cook said, "I think that we put a dagger in it."

Tim Fitzsimons is a reporter based in Washington, D.C. He writes about technology, business and the Middle East.

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Millions of Americans are still grappling with debt they've accumulated since the recession hit. And new numbers out Monday show many are having a tougher time than you might think.

One in 10 working Americans between the ages of 35 and 44 are getting their wages garnished. That means their pay is being docked — often over an old credit card debt, medical bill or student loan.

That striking figure comes out of a collaboration between NPR and ProPublica. The reporting offers the first available national numbers on wage garnishment.

A 'Roundhouse' Punch

Back in 2009, Kevin Evans was one of millions of Americans blindsided by the recession. He had a 25-year career selling office furniture, but suddenly, companies stopped buying furniture. His income collapsed. He sold his three-bedroom home outside Kansas City that he could no longer afford.

This story was co-reported by NPR and ProPublica, an investigative journalism organization.

In conjunction with these stories, ADP, the nation's largest payroll services provider, has released a report on wage garnishment. It studied 2013 payroll records for 13 million employees at the request of ProPublica. Read the report here.

For more on this story:

From NPR: With Debt Collection, Your Bank Account Could Be At Risk

From ProPublica: Unseen Toll, Wages Of Millions Seized To Pay Past Debts

From ProPublica: Old Debts, Fresh Pain: Weak Laws Offer Debtors Little Protection

If you have first-hand experience being sued over a debt, NPR and ProPublica would love to hear from you. Use this form to send a tip confidentially. A reporter may follow up with you.

For the next several years he worked a string of low-wage jobs: at a lumber yard, at a 24-hour fitness center. He rented a room from a friend. He never collected unemployment. But with a daughter in college and basic living expenses, he ended up with a $7,000 credit card debt that he says he couldn't pay. Evans, 58, had fallen from middle-class life into basic subsistence living.

Then late last year, he found a better-paying, full-time customer service job in Springfield, Mo. Things were finally getting better, until early this year, when he opened his paycheck and found a quarter of it missing. His credit card lender, Capital One, had garnished his wages.

Twice a month, whether he could afford it or not, 25 percent of his pay — the legal limit — would go to his debt, which had ballooned with interest and fees to more than $15,000. "It was a roundhouse from the right that just knocks you down and out," Evans says.

The recession and its aftermath have fueled an explosion of cases like Evans'. Creditors and collectors have pursued struggling cardholders and other debtors in court, securing judgments that allow them to seize a chunk of even meager earnings. The financial blow can be devastating — more than half of U.S. states allow creditors to take a quarter of after-tax wages. But despite the rise in garnishments, the number of Americans affected has remained unknown.

At the request of ProPublica, ADP, the nation's largest payroll services provider, undertook a study of payroll records for 13 million employees. ADP's report, released Monday, shows that among employees in the prime working ages of 35 to 44 who had their wages garnished in 2013, roughly half, unsurprisingly, owed child support. But a sizable number had their earnings docked for consumer debts, such as credit cards, medical bills and student loans.

Your Money

With Debt Collection, Your Bank Account Could Be At Risk

Actually, for workers earning $25,000 to $40,000 a year, more people were garnished for consumer debt than for child support. This marks a dramatic change. In the past, the vast majority of wage garnishments went to secure child support payments or to collect on unpaid taxes. In recent years, though, debt collectors have been filing millions of lawsuits against people for just basic consumer debt: medical bills, student loans and credit card debt.

Extended to the entire population of U.S. employees, ADP's findings indicate that 4 million workers — about 3 percent of all employees — had wages taken for a consumer debt in 2013. People in some geographic regions and income groups had twice that rate of garnishment.

Carolyn Carter of the National Consumer Law Center says these findings are "alarming."

"States and the federal government should look on reforming our wage garnishment laws with some urgency," she says.

The increase in consumer debt seizures is "a big change," largely invisible to researchers because of the lack of data, says Michael Collins, faculty director of the Center for Financial Security at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The potential financial hardship imposed by these seizures and their sheer number should grab the attention of policymakers, he says. "It is something we should care about."

High Garnishment Rates In The Midwest

ADP's study, the first large-scale look at how many employees are having their wages garnished and why, reveals what has been a hidden burden for working-class families. Wage seizures were most common among middle-aged, blue-collar workers and lower-income employees.

Nearly 5 percent of those earning between $25,000 and $40,000 per year had a portion of their wages diverted to pay down consumer debts alone in 2013, ADP found. More people in that income group were garnished to pay off consumer debt than to pay child support.

Perhaps due to the struggling economy in the region, the rate was highest in the Midwest. There, more than 6 percent of employees earning between $25,000 and $40,000 — 1 in 16 — had wages seized over consumer debt. Employees in the Northeast had the lowest rate. The statistics were not broken down by race.

Currently, debtors' fates depend significantly on where they happen to live. State laws vary widely. Four states — Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina — largely prohibit wage garnishment stemming from consumer debt.

Most states, however, allow creditors to seize a quarter of a debtor's wages — the highest rate permitted under federal law. Evans had the misfortune to live in Missouri, which not only allows creditors to seize 25 percent, but also allows them to continue to charge a high interest rate even after a judgment.

A Note About Garnishment In Missouri

Missouri provides a protection for a head of household with dependent children which caps the garnishment rate at 10 percent of a worker's paycheck. But Kevin Evans didn't qualify for that — or even know about it. And the burden is on the debtor to know about such exemptions and ask for a lower garnishment rate. It is legal for debt collectors to seize 25 percent of people's paychecks in Missouri even if they are head of household until the debtor objects and asks for the exemption.

By early 2010, Evans had fallen so far behind that Capital One suspended his card. For months, he made monthly $200 payments toward his $7,000 debt, according to statements reviewed by NPR and ProPublica. But by this time, the payments barely kept pace with the interest piling on at 26 percent. In 2011, when Evans could no longer keep up, Capital One filed suit. Court records show that Evans was served a summons, but he says he didn't understand that the stack of paperwork he received included a summons with a hearing date to appear in court.

If Evans had lived in neighboring Illinois, the interest rate on his debt would have dropped to below 10 percent after his creditor had won a judgment in court. But in Missouri, creditors can continue to add the contractual rate of interest for the life of the debt, so Evans' bill kept mounting. Missouri law also allowed Capital One to tack on a $1,200 attorney fee. Some other states cap such fees to no more than a few hundred dollars.

Evans has involuntarily paid over $6,000 this year on his old debt, an average of about $480 each paycheck, but he still owes more than $10,000. "It's my debt. I want to pay it," Evans says. But "I need to come up with large quantities of money so I don't just keep getting pummeled."

Capital One says in a statement that legal action is always a last resort. The company says it tried to work with Evans but that he was unable to keep up with the payments on a payment plan that he had agreed to.

The Garnishment Process

Companies can also seize funds from a borrower's bank account. There is no data on how frequently this happens, even though it is a common recourse for collectors. Among the people interviewed by NPR and ProPublica who were having their wages garnished, more often than not, debt collectors had also made attempts to seize money from their bank accounts. Some people we interviewed say they had stopped keeping money in banks as a result.

Guilty And Charged

As Court Fees Rise, The Poor Are Paying The Price

The garnishment process for most debts begins in local courts. A company can file suit as soon as a few months after a debtor falls behind. A ProPublica review of court records in eight states shows the bulk of lawsuits are filed by just a few types of creditors and companies. Besides major credit card lenders such as Capital One, medical debt is a major source of such suits. High-cost lenders who deal in payday and installment loans also file suits by the thousands. And finally, an outsized portion comes from debt buyers — companies that purchase mostly unpaid credit card bills.

When these creditors and collectors go to court, they are almost always represented by an attorney. Defendants — usually in tough financial straits or unfamiliar with the court system — almost never are.

In Clay County, Mo., where Capital One brought its suit against Evans in 2011, only 7 percent of defendants in debt collection cases have their own attorneys, according to ProPublica's review of state court data. Often the debtors don't show up to court at all: The most common outcome of a debt collection lawsuit in Missouri (and any other state) is a judgment by default.

Millions of debt collection lawsuits are filed every year in local courts. In 2011, for instance, the year Capital One went to court against Evans, more than 100,000 such suits were filed in Missouri alone.

Despite these numbers, creditors and debt collectors say they only pursue lawsuits and garnishments against consumers after other collection attempts fail. "Litigation is a very high-cost mechanism for trying to collect a debt," says Rob Foehl, general counsel at the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals. "It's really only a small percentage of outstanding debts that go through the process."

Experts in garnishment say they've seen a clear shift in the type of debts that are pursued. A decade ago, child support accounted for the overwhelming majority of pay seizures, said Amy Bryant, a consultant who advises employers on payroll issues and has written a book on garnishment laws.

"The emphasis is now on creditor garnishments," she says.

Bryant also says the rise in garnishments has become an unanticipated burden for employers.

"It becomes very complicated," she says, particularly for national employers who must navigate the differences in state laws. "It's very easy to make a mistake in the process." If an employer does not correctly handle a garnishment order, she says, it can become liable for a portion or even the entirety of the debt in some states.

The burden was enough to prompt the American Payroll Association to request in 2011 that the Uniform Law Commission draft a model state law on wage garnishment. Bryant said employers are hoping that the new law, which is still being drafted, will be adopted by a large number of states and reduce complications.

What's it like for a family trying to live on wages reduced by old debts? On Tuesday, NPR and ProPublica will examine how much creditors and debt collectors are allowed to take from debtors' wages and bank accounts, and how it impacts their lives.

If you have first-hand experience being sued over a debt, NPR and ProPublica would love to hear from you. Use this form to send a tip confidentially. A reporter may follow up with you.

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garnishment

Some 200 bishops from around the world are gathered at the Vatican for a two-week assembly to discuss issues related to the family, including artificial contraception, premarital sex and ministering gay unions.

But one of the most controversial is a proposal to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion — taboo in church doctrine for 2,000 years.

In February, Pope Francis tapped one of his favorite theologians, German Cardinal Walter Kasper, to address a meeting of all the cardinals.

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Pope Francis leads a vigil prayer in preparation for the synod on the family on Oct. 4, at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

Pope Francis leads a vigil prayer in preparation for the synod on the family on Oct. 4, at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.

Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

Kasper argued that the church must show more mercy to people whose first marriages have failed and who want to remain within the church.

"With respect to the divorced and the remarried people, the church does not give them absolution, [does] not give them Holy Communion. And many people say this is not the God of Jesus, because Jesus was very merciful — he forgives us — and the church does not," he said.

Kasper spoke to NPR after his address. He said it provoked sharp exchanges among some of the cardinals.

"Of course there was a heated debate, but there were not only cardinals who were against it, there were also cardinals who were in favor," he said. "And so the voices are divided. The pope himself was very grateful for the discourse."

Many Catholic conservatives rejected Kasper's proposals. On the eve of the current gathering of bishops, known as a synod, five cardinals published a book of essays, "Remaining in the Truth of Christ." In them, they described Kasper's permissive attitude toward Communion as "fundamentally flawed."

One of the authors is American Cardinal Raymond Burke, head of the Vatican's top court. In an interview with Catholic News Service, he dismissed the viability of Kasper's proposal.

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"I cannot see how it can go forward if we are going to honor the words of our Lord himself, through which he said, 'the man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery,' " Burke said.

Catholic doctrine stipulates that a second marriage without the complex and often lengthy annulment of the first amounts to adultery, and that anyone married in a civil ceremony is living in sin and therefore ineligible to receive the sacraments.

But Kasper says there is no such single category as "the divorced and remarried." For example, he says, a woman who is abandoned by her husband is different from the man who abandoned his wife.

"So we have to distinguish the cases," he says.

Kasper also raises the idea of penitence.

"The other question is, how a person who confesses, has made a mistake and so on, and repents his sins, why he cannot be absolved and permitted to go to Holy Communion." Kasper says. "There is a discussion going on in the church, a discussion for and against this proposal, the synod together with the pope, who has to decide the whole question."

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Faithful hold candles during a vigil prayer in preparation for the synod on the family on Oct. 4, at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

Faithful hold candles during a vigil prayer in preparation for the synod on the family on Oct. 4, at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican.

Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

But Burke, the American cardinal, hopes the synod fathers will drop the issue altogether.

"These are bishops, these are shepherds of the flock, who are Catholic," he says, "and I can't imagine them accepting this proposal — I don't know quite how I would be able to digest it."

Pope Francis was asked last year about a possible change in church teaching on divorced and remarried Catholics. His reply? "I believe that this is the season of mercy."

Several participants in the synod have raised the possibility of a simplified annulment process, suggesting that many Catholic couples enter marriage unaware of the required commitments, making the union invalid from the start.

The synod has another week and a half to run. No decisions are expected until a second synod on the family next year, and it's not clear where the majority of bishops stand on the Communion and divorce issue.

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