Midland Credit Management, Inc. v. Eric J Roberts

Let’s cut right to the chase: a man in Oklahoma is being sued over a debt of $1,576.79 — a sum so specific it sounds like someone added a late fee, a finance charge, and a single expired pack of gum to the total — all because he allegedly stopped paying for a Dell Pay credit account he opened eighteen years ago. Yes, you read that right. This isn’t a murder mystery. There’s no missing body, no secret affair, no dramatic courtroom reveal. But in the world of petty civil drama, this is the equivalent of finding out your high school ex has been quietly collecting receipts for the gas money you never paid them back in 2006.

So who are we even talking about here? On one side, we’ve got Midland Credit Management, Inc., which sounds like a villainous debt-collection syndicate from a 1980s action movie but is, in reality, a very real and very busy third-party debt collector based in Minnesota. These folks don’t lend money — they buy up old debts from original creditors (like Comenity Capital Bank, which in this case handled the Dell Pay credit program) for pennies on the dollar, then try to collect the full amount. It’s like being the guy at a yard sale who buys a box of dusty VHS tapes for $5, then lists them on eBay for $99.99 with free shipping.

On the other side is Eric J. Roberts, a presumably regular dude from Carter County, Oklahoma, who, according to the court filing, opened a Dell Pay account back in September 2006. That’s before the iPhone existed. That’s when MySpace was still cool. That’s when “buying a computer on credit” felt like a grown-up, responsible move — like joining a gym or getting a credit card with a $500 limit. The account number? A long, ominous string ending in 7130, the kind of number that haunts your credit report like a ghost from your financial past.

Now, what actually happened? Well, according to the affidavit filed by Isaac Buse — Legal Specialist at Midland and, apparently, keeper of the digital debt scrolls — Roberts stopped making payments on the account. The last recorded payment was on October 5, 2023. That’s recent! This isn’t some ancient, forgotten debt from the Bush administration. This guy was still throwing money at this thing last year. Then, on May 31, 2024, the account was “charged off” — accounting-speak for “we’ve given up on getting paid, so we’re writing it off as a loss.” But here’s the twist: instead of vanishing into the void, the debt got scooped up by Midland Credit Management on June 20, 2024, who decided, “You know what? We’re gonna try.” And now, nearly a year later, they’re in court, asking a judge to make Eric J. Roberts pay up.

The legal claim? Simple: breach of contract, or as the filing calls it, “default on debt.” In plain English: you agreed to pay, you didn’t pay, now we’re suing. No fraud, no theft, no identity theft claims — just a straightforward “you owe us money” situation. Midland isn’t asking for punitive damages, they’re not demanding an injunction, and they definitely don’t want a jury trial (probably because they know this case is about as dramatic as a spreadsheet). They just want their $1,576.79, plus interest at the statutory rate (which in Oklahoma is 5% per year if there’s no contract rate, but let’s be honest — this case won’t last long enough for compound interest to matter), court costs, and “such other relief as the Court may deem just and proper,” which is legalese for “and maybe a cookie if you’re feeling generous.”

Now, is $1,576.79 a lot of money? Well, it’s not nothing. It’s about the cost of a decent laptop — ironic, given that this debt originated from a Dell Pay account. It’s also roughly the price of a one-way flight to Europe, a month of rent in some parts of the country, or 315 Big Macs. But in the grand scheme of debt collection lawsuits, this is small potatoes. Most debt collectors don’t even bother with cases under $2,000 unless they can file in bulk. The fact that Midland is pursuing this — with a full affidavit, notarized in Minnesota, signed by a Legal Specialist named Isaac Buse — tells you two things: either their algorithms flagged this as collectible, or they’re very committed to the principle of the thing. Maybe Isaac stayed up late writing this affidavit. Maybe he believed in it.

What’s wild here isn’t the amount, though. It’s the timeline. This account has been open since 2006. That’s eighteen years. People get married, have kids, move states, change careers, and die in less time. And for nearly two decades, this debt either sat quietly on Roberts’ credit report or was paid down in dribs and drabs until — poof — he stopped in October 2023. Why? Did he lose his job? Did he decide, “You know what? Dell can keep the laptop”? Did he forget about it entirely, only to be blindsided by a lawsuit in 2025? We don’t know. The filing doesn’t say. And that’s the most tantalizing part — the silence. The gaps. The unspoken drama.

And let’s talk about the affidavit. Isaac Buse, bless his heart, swears under penalty of perjury that he has “personal knowledge” of the account records, that they’re kept in the “regular course of business,” and that if called to testify, he “could and would competently testify.” This is standard boilerplate, but reading it feels like watching a procedural drama where the witness is a man who has never seen the defendant, has no idea what he bought on that Dell Pay account (was it a printer? A monitor? A tower with Windows Vista?), but is legally obligated to say, “Yes, Your Honor, this debt is real, and it is exactly $1,576.79.”

Our take? We’re rooting for the absurdity. Not for Midland, not for Roberts — but for the sheer audacity of a legal system that will process a lawsuit over a debt that predates the iPhone, survived the financial crisis, and outlived multiple presidential administrations. This isn’t just about money. It’s about persistence. It’s about bureaucracy. It’s about a man in Minnesota swearing under oath about a debt in Oklahoma that originated during the George W. Bush era. And honestly? We’re here for it. Because if nothing else, this case proves that in America, no debt ever truly dies. It just gets assigned, reassigned, and eventually, sued over in Carter County with a notarized affidavit and a P.O. box in Oklahoma City.

So will Eric J. Roberts pay? Probably. Will he even show up in court? Doubtful. Will Isaac Buse ever meet him? Almost certainly not. But somewhere, in a server farm in Minnesota, a digital record flickers — a testament to a Dell computer purchase from 2006, still haunting the present, one penny at a time.