Midland Credit Management, Inc. v. Lesly Lucero

Let’s be honest: we’ve all gotten that letter. The one that shows up in the mailbox like a passive-aggressive ghost from your financial past, whispering, “Remember that $30 pair of jeans you bought in 2020? Well, it’s now worth a small vacation.” But for Lesly Lucero of Custer County, Oklahoma, the ghost didn’t just whisper—it sued. For $1,398.88. Yes, you read that right: a full-blown court case over an amount that, in most households, wouldn’t even cover a single month’s grocery bill. Welcome to the American debt collection circus, where your credit card balance can become a courtroom drama faster than you can say “interest accrual.”

So who are these people, and how did we get here? On one side, we have Lesly Lucero, presumably a regular human being who once applied for a credit card—probably not with the grand vision of someday being sued over it, but hey, life happens. On the other side: Midland Credit Management, Inc., a debt collection company based in Minnesota that doesn’t even blink at suing someone over $1,400. These folks are the professional secondhand debt dealers of the financial world. They don’t lend you money—they buy up the debts you already didn’t pay, like vultures circling a very specific kind of financial roadkill. In this case, they scooped up Lucero’s old Comenity Capital Bank account—the same bank that powers store cards for places like Burlington, which, let’s be real, is where half of America buys their slightly-too-tight jeans and aggressively patterned blouses.

Now, the timeline here is almost Shakespearean in its quiet tragedy. Lucero opened the account back in August 2020—peak pandemic, peak online shopping, peak “I’ll just buy this sweatshirt and deal with the consequences later.” For a while, things were fine. Payments were made. The machine churned. But then, in April 2024, the last payment was posted. Silence. No more payments. And by November 30, 2024, the account was officially “charged off,” which is banker-speak for “we’ve given up on getting paid and are now treating this as a loss.” But here’s where it gets wild: instead of just writing it off and moving on, the bank sold the debt to Midland Credit Management, who then—like a phoenix rising from the ashes of someone’s unpaid sweater purchase—decided to sue. On December 23, 2025, they filed a petition in Custer County District Court, claiming Lucero still owes them $1,398.88. That’s over a year after the debt was charged off. That’s not just persistence—that’s commitment.

Now, let’s talk about what’s actually happening in this lawsuit, because it’s not like Midland is accusing Lucero of grand theft or identity fraud. Nope. The legal claim? “Indebtedness.” That’s it. That’s the whole case. They’re saying, “Hey, this person didn’t pay their bill, and now we own that debt, so please, Judge, make her pay us.” It’s not flashy. There are no dramatic betrayals, no secret recordings, no embezzlement schemes. Just a cold, hard assertion: money was owed, it wasn’t paid, and now someone else owns the right to collect it. The evidence? An affidavit from one RaeJeanna Rivera, a Legal Specialist at Midland, who swears under penalty of perjury that—based on the company’s electronic records—yes, the balance is $1,398.88, yes, the account was opened in 2020, yes, the last payment was in April 2024, and yes, they’re now the proud owners of this financial relic. It’s the legal equivalent of “the computer says yes.”

And what does Midland want? Well, they’re not asking for a mansion or a lifetime supply of Burlington socks. They want $1,398.88—plus interest at the statutory rate (which in Oklahoma is 5% unless otherwise agreed), plus court costs, plus whatever “other relief” the court feels like tossing in. Is $1,400 a lot? In the grand scheme of lawsuits, no. You could buy a decent used car for that. Or a really nice couch. Or, you know, not be sued. But for someone living paycheck to paycheck—especially in a rural county like Custer, where the median household income is around $50,000—$1,400 is not nothing. It’s rent. It’s car repairs. It’s a month of groceries. And yet, here we are, watching a corporation treat it like Monopoly money, filing a lawsuit over an amount that probably wouldn’t even cover their lawyer’s hourly rate.

Now, here’s the part where we, the impartial narrators of petty civil chaos, take off the judge’s robe and put on our opinion hat. What’s the most absurd thing about this case? Is it that a company is suing over such a small sum? Not really—debt collectors do this all the time. Is it that the debt was sold and resold like a bad penny? Also not shocking. No, the real absurdity is the sheer bureaucratic theater of it all. We’ve got a notarized affidavit from Minnesota, filed in Oklahoma, over a credit card used at a discount department store, for a balance that likely started as a few hundred bucks in retail therapy. There’s a whole legal production—sworn statements, corporate succession, electronic record-keeping protocols—all to chase down a debt that, let’s be honest, probably stemmed from a pair of leggings and a moment of online shopping weakness during lockdown.

And yet, we can’t help but root for Lucero. Not because she’s necessarily in the right—remember, we don’t know her side of the story, and she may very well have had the means to pay and just… didn’t. But because this case is a perfect microcosm of how broken the American debt system is. A person falls behind. A bank gives up. A collector buys the debt for pennies on the dollar. Then, suddenly, it’s court time. No negotiation. No grace period. Just: pay up or we’re taking you to trial over your old Burlington card. It’s not justice. It’s debt collection as performance art.

So as this case winds its way through the Custer County courts, we’ll be watching. Will Lucero show up? Will she settle? Will she argue that the debt was already charged off, or that Midland can’t prove they actually own it? Or will this all end with a quiet judgment, a ding on her credit, and a reminder that in America, no debt is too small to become a legal drama? One thing’s for sure: if this were a true crime podcast, the theme music would be the sound of a credit card being declined at checkout.