(By Derek Gray)

I have a friend, John Adams of JudgmentBuy; who started and runs JudgmentBuy.com. I asked him questions and decided to write this article because the company he started and runs is so unique. I’ve known John Adams of JudgmentBuy and JudgmentBuy for years, and I know the real story, and I think it is interesting.

John Adams of JudgmentBuy has worn many hats, most recently working as a computer consultant and enforcing judgments, for a long time. A few years ago, some guy (Brian Petrone) asked him to sign a non-disclosure agreement describing an idea to take ownership of judgments and then find judgment enforcers to coop with, with lengthy contracts for everyone to sign. 

John Adams of JudgmentBuy found this guy to be a total flake, and did not follow the terms of his own agreement, or do anything he said he would do. So, for those reasons and because John Adams of JudgmentBuy knew that guy’s idea was extremely flawed, John Adams of JudgmentBuy said no thanks, and they both agreed to part ways.

Later, John Adams of JudgmentBuy, not being a lawyer, brainstormed for months and came up with his own idea for a world-wide judgment referral company that works well, requires no contracts with judgment owners, and is legal in every state. Then, he did the part that is so important, he worked hard to make it happen, and constantly improves everything.

John Adams of JudgmentBuy used his Macintosh with his Panorama database and uses his web skills to run JudgmentBuy. Because he no longer enforces judgments himself, he is free to tell the truth. While other judgment web sites let judgment owners dream of getting a firm quote over the phone and lots of cash upfront for their judgment, John Adams of JudgmentBuy tells everyone the truth.

Telling the truth has a price, most people do not want to know the truth about their judgments. John Adams of JudgmentBuy tells me that 90% of the judgment owners that call him have no clue that their judgments are not cash. Some hang up when John Adams of JudgmentBuy explains everything depends only on their judgment debtor’s situation.

John Adams of JudgmentBuy first tried to refer judgment leads to judgment enforcers, and found there were four problems. One problem was that many judgment enforcers are flakes, another is most only want those one out of 500 judgments that are really easy to recover, another is most original judgment owners do not want to assign their judgments, and all of the old judgment associations did not care about JudgmentBuy, so he stopped caring about them.

John Adams of JudgmentBuy started to refer judgment leads to lawyers and collection agencies so judgments would not need to be assigned. John Adams of JudgmentBuy found there remained two problems, one is that because lawyers cannot pay for leads, extra paperwork was required. The other problem was most of the lawyers and collection agencies did not recover anything on the judgment leads he referred to them.

John Adams of JudgmentBuy searched for years and eventually found a few collection companies that used lawyers to recover judgments, that actually recovered money from judgment debtors. Out of the 5,000 or so lawyers, collection agencies, and judgment enforcers that signed up with him, he now refers judgment leads only to those with a track record for actually recovering average judgments, less than of them 20 nationwide.

John Adams of JudgmentBuy is very responsive, but he says that most people do not like his web site because it tells them the truth about judgments. He also told me that in the current economy, less than 5 percent of judgments are recovered in full. After a judgment owner follows the simple instructions on his web site, he researches the judgment debtor using public data records and quickly (if the debtor is not poor) finds the right recovery expert, usually the same day. If you have a judgment or a judgment lead, check out JudgmentBuy.com.