LVNV Funding LLC v. Dustin Tate

Let’s cut right to the chase: a man in Oklahoma owes $10,922.81 — not to a bank, not to a credit card company he’s ever heard of, but to a shadowy financial entity called LVNV Funding LLC, which bought his debt from a trust with a name straight out of a Silicon Valley AI startup pitch deck: Pagaya AI Debt Grantor Trust 2024-3. Yes, you read that right. There’s an actual AI Debt Grantor Trust now. And no, we are not making this up.

So who is Dustin Tate? Honestly, we don’t know much. He’s just a guy, probably living his life, maybe bought something online with a WebBank-issued credit line — possibly a "Buy Now, Pay Later" deal, the kind that lets you splurge on a Peloton or a new mattress with zero upfront cost and maximum regret later. At some point, things went sideways. Payments stopped. The account defaulted. And then, like a horror movie jump scare, the debt didn’t just get sent to collections — it got securitized, packaged, sold, and assigned through layers of financial middlemen until it landed in the lap of LVNV Funding LLC, a company that exists solely to buy up other people’s bad debts and sue to get them paid. Think of them less as a bank and more as a debt vulture — circling, waiting, then swooping in with a lawsuit when the carcass of someone’s financial misstep hits the ground.

Now, let’s follow the money trail, because it’s wild. According to the court filing, Dustin Tate originally borrowed from WebBank — a real, legitimate financial institution based in Utah that partners with fintech companies to offer digital credit products. But WebBank didn’t hold onto the debt. Nope. Instead, they sold it — or more likely, bundled it with thousands of other defaulted accounts — to Pagaya AI Debt Grantor Trust 2024-3. Let that name marinate. Pagaya is a fintech company that uses artificial intelligence to assess and purchase consumer debt portfolios. That’s right: an algorithm, trained on your spending habits and credit history, decided your unpaid balance was worth buying. It’s not a person in a suit making the call — it’s a machine crunching data, spitting out probabilities, and saying, “Yeah, this dude might pay someday. Let’s buy his debt for pennies on the dollar.”

Then, on June 12, 2025 — just a few months before this lawsuit — that trust sold Portfolio 45806 (which includes Dustin Tate’s account) to LVNV Funding or one of its predecessors. And just like that, the right to collect $10,922.81 — principal, interest, fees, whatever’s left — transferred to LVNV. They didn’t lend Dustin a dime. They never met him. They don’t care if he lost his job or had a medical emergency. All they know is: the paperwork says they own the debt, and now they want their money. So they filed a lawsuit in Oklahoma County District Court, backed by an affidavit from someone named Dimeshia Hook — an “Authorized Representative” of LVNV — who swears under penalty of perjury that all this is true, that the records are accurate, and that yes, Dustin Tate owes every penny.

Why are they in court? Because this is how debt collection works in America now. LVNV isn’t asking for a trial. They’re not accusing Dustin of fraud or theft. They’re simply asking the judge to issue a default judgment — a rubber-stamp ruling that says, “Yep, the math checks out, you owe this money, pay up.” The legal claim is straightforward: indebtedness. That’s legalese for “you borrowed, you didn’t pay, now we’re suing.” And because LVNV has the affidavit, the assignment documents, and the chain of ownership (at least on paper), they’re likely to win — unless Dustin shows up with proof he already paid, or that the debt isn’t his, or that the documents are flawed. But let’s be real: most people don’t show up. They ignore the lawsuit, thinking it’s a scam, or they can’t afford a lawyer, or they’re just too overwhelmed. And that’s when the courts start garnishing wages, freezing bank accounts, and turning a $7,000 credit card balance into a $12,000 financial nightmare.

Now, what do they want? $10,922.81. Is that a lot? Depends on who you ask. If you’re a multi-million-dollar debt-buying firm, it’s chump change — a tiny blip in a portfolio worth millions. But for an individual? That’s a car payment. A year of rent. A medical bill. A dream vacation. Or, more likely, an impossible sum that could tank a credit score, trigger wage garnishment, and haunt someone for years. And LVNV isn’t just after the principal — they want interest (at the statutory rate, which in Oklahoma is 10% per year), court costs, and a reasonable attorney’s fee. So if this drags on, that $10,922 could easily balloon to $13,000 or more. All over a debt they didn’t originate, didn’t manage, and didn’t lose sleep over.

Here’s the absurd part: nobody in this story seems to be the actual lender. WebBank issued the credit, sure. But they’re long gone. Pagaya’s AI scooped up the debt like digital scrap metal. LVNV is just the collector with a law firm on speed dial. And Dustin Tate? He’s just a name on a spreadsheet, a data point in a high-volume litigation machine. The whole thing feels less like a courtroom and more like a financial shell game — where your debt gets passed around like a hot potato until someone sues you for it, and good luck proving otherwise when the only evidence is an affidavit from a stranger who’s never met you.

We’re not saying Dustin Tate doesn’t owe the money. Maybe he maxed out a credit line and ghosted it. Maybe he forgot to pay. Maybe he’s disputing it. We don’t know. But what we do know is that this case is a perfect snapshot of how broken the consumer debt system has become. You can now be sued by a company that didn’t lend you money, using records you’ve never seen, over a debt that’s been bought and sold like a stock. And the whole thing hinges on an affidavit — a single document signed by someone named Dimeshia Hook, notarized on a Wednesday morning, claiming it’s all true. That’s the foundation of a $10,922 lawsuit.

So who are we rooting for? Honestly? We’re rooting for the system to make sense. We’re rooting for transparency. We’re rooting for a world where you can look at a bill and know who you owe, why, and how it ended up in court. But until then, we’ll keep watching cases like this one — where AI trusts trade human debt, and people get sued by corporations that exist only on paper — and wonder: when did our financial lives become someone else’s profit margin?