Law firm contacted me about a unverified debt allegedly owed to Carrington Mortgage Services of Anaheim California. Interestingly, Shapiro and Schwartz, based in Houston Texas, acting as third party debt collectors has not met the legal requirements to collect debts in Texas. (Section 392.101 of the Texas Finance Code prohibits a third-party debt collector or credit bureau from engaging in debt collection in Texas unless the third-party debt collector or credit bureau has obtained a surety bond and filed a copy of the bond with the Office of the Secretary of State.) I would advise any Texas resident who has a debt collector, other than the original creditor, attempting to collect a debt from you, to first make the debt collector prove that the debt is legal for them to collect and second, make sure that the debt collector has a legal right to collect debts in Texas.