Fake debt collector or law firm issuing a final notice before legal action or lawsuit, demanding immediate payment to avoid wage garnishment — illegal collection tactics and advance-fee fraud; real debt collection is governed by FDCPA and requires postal written validation notices, not cold email payment links threatening immediate garnishment.
debt-collection-legal-threat-phish
What this tier means
High-confidence threat indicator — phishing, impersonation, BEC, or scam pattern. Strong contributor to the trash decision.
How Gorganizer detects this
Fake debt collector or law firm issuing a "final notice before legal action" claiming the recipient faces an imminent lawsuit or wage garnishment unless the overdue balance is paid immediately via email link — illegal collection tactics and advance-fee fraud. Real debt collection under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA, 15 U.S.C. §1692) requires a written debt validation notice to be mailed within 5 days of first contact and prohibits false statements about legal proceedings or garnishment; real attorneys initiating litigation send process-server-delivered legal documents, not cold email payment links. The combination of "final notice before lawsuit" + "wage garnishment" + payment link from a non-law-firm domain is a consistent fraud pattern. Detection: final notice/legal action/lawsuit + pay overdue balance to avoid wage garnishment vocabulary + no List-Unsubscribe + no In-Reply-To + not protected sender. Trash score: +4. Source: GC1-R25; CFPB FDCPA debt collection rules; FTC fake debt collector scam advisory 2025; BBB fake legal threat debt collection patterns.
False-positive guard
Every signal in Gorganizer feeds a multi-module score — never a sole verdict. This is a threat-tier signal — it adds a strong contribution to the trash score. The full pipeline still requires convergence across multiple modules + a margin over the safety floor before deletion happens, and Gmail's trash (30-day recovery) is always used — never permanent delete.
About the scoring engine
Gorganizer's scoring engine emits over 1,800 signals across six modules — headers, sender, subject, body, attachments, and structural metadata. Every email is scored by every module independently; the final verdict requires multiple modules to agree and the trash score to beat the safety floor by a margin.
Sacred safety guards — never delete starred emails, replies, calendar invites, receipts/invoices, or attachments — apply unconditionally regardless of any signal.
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