|
?:reviewBody
|
-
In February 2016, a news story about a man who was arrested for unpaid student loans went viral on the internet. While most of these news articles accurately reported the details that led to Paul Aker's arrest, a series of misleading headlines and sensational reports led to several false rumors about the situation, chief among them that U.S. Marshals were actively tracking down people with unpaid student loans in order to arrest them. But this is not the case. Aker was not arrested simply because he didn't pay his student loans; he was arrested because he failed to obey a court order, an important distinction: Yahoo Finance reported that the federal government sued Aker in 2007 over his unpaid federal student loan debt. When Aker failed to appear in court, a judge ordered that he pay the full balance. Aker failed to make that payment also, and in 2012 a judge issued a warrant for his arrest: Another piece of misinformation which originated with this news story was that Aker was arrested by seven armed U.S. Marshals, which is technically true, but misleading. Aker said in an interview that he went inside his home to get a gun as Marshals tried to arrest him, at which point they called for backup: U.S. Marshals elaborated on Aker's version of events in a statement: Aker was brought to court (not prison), where he agreed to a payment plan for his federal student loans. As of 2015, Americans owed a collective $1.2 trillion in student loans. Of those, only about 37 percent are actively paying them down, and 17 percent are in default or delinquency: While U.S. Marshals have been called upon to serve on the court's behalf, they are not arresting people simply for having unpaid loans.
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}