Those of you who have blown off your fiscal obligations might be surprised to learn that your delinquent debts are often bought and sold for pennies on the dollar to just about anyone with the skill set to operate a phone. No wonder ex-cons flock to debt collecting because, well, having a rap sheet is a great qualification when shaking someone down.

Journalist Jake Halpern's "Bad Paper" is a seamlessly told page-turner that takes readers through the world of debt chasing, a world where there are no hard-and-fast rules, and where fortunes can be made through guile and street hustle.

At the center of the story is an unlikely partnership of two collectors: Aaron Siegel, a former Bank of America wealth manager and member of the upper class of Buffalo, N.Y., and brash tough guy Brandon Wilson, who served some serious time behind bars before launching a collection agency in Bangor, Maine.

Despite the disparate backgrounds, the odd couple thrived. Siegel depended on the street savvy of Wilson, and Wilson needed the lucrative accounts Siegel could buy. Halpern names one of those accounts the Package, a parcel of 8,518 credit card debts worth $47.5 million. Siegel bought the Package for "one penny on the dollar."

The stories Halpern tells of how people get into financial straits are heartbreaking. More disturbing is that packages of consumer debts are sometimes grabbed by more than one collection agency and the debtor ends up paying more than once.

This is what happens to "debtor #3,159 from the Package — a woman named Theresa," who thought that her $6,000 debt had been settled for $2,700. However, the collection agency never sent a receipt of payment and her credit report continued to list the original debt.

Jake Halpern

Turns out that someone else had the same package as Siegel, who employed Wilson and his armed crew to track down the debt thief. One of his posse packs a machete, "for when I run out of bullets."

"Bad Paper" exposes a business whose practices are more like the Wild West than those of a well-regulated industry. Watchdog agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are trying to reel in the abuses, but in 2009, of the 89,190 complaints against debt collectors, the FTC followed through with only one enforcement action.

As Benny — a former star in the debt-collecting racket now serving time in the Attica Correctional Facility for attempted robbery — remarked, "In collection, we made pretty good money, man. … I think we make more money than you would actually [make] selling drugs. It's beautiful."

Stephen J. Lyons is the author of three books, most recently "The 1,000-Year Flood: Destruction, Loss, Rescue, and Redemption Along the Mississippi River." He currently has no debt.