Watch John Oliver Forgive $15 Million of Debt on TV

American household collectively owe over $12 trillion in debt, and right now, 436 billion of that debt is seriously delinquent, meaning it's 90 or more days past due is not really surprising. What may surprise you is the extent to which seriously delinquent debts have now given birth to an entire debt buying industry. When most consumers get a call and say, I'm calling your Bank of America debt, you assume that it's someone a Bank of America. But what happens is Bank of America has sold off that debt for pennies on the dollar years ago, and it's been bought and sold and bought and sold and bought and sold. Most of the big banks do it, and not just banks, but payday loans, book club membership, gym fees, auto loans. Every year, billions of dollars of his dad is sold off cheap. It's true debt buying companies like these that you've probably never heard of have amassed a huge amount of Americans debt. In fact, the largest Encore capital group, which has these subsidiaries tell investors that one in five consumers either owes the money now or has owed the money in the past. What's most concerning about all of this is that in some states there is a shockingly low barrier of entry into this industry. In these states, you can purchase debt with no license, and in these states you can collect on debt with no license. Essentially, that means there are places in this country where you need to fill out less paperwork to start collecting money from people's pockets than you do to collect fish from a in lake debt. Buying is a grimy business and badly needs more oversight because, as it stands, any idiot can get into it because I'm an idiot and we started a debt buying company and it was disturbingly easy. Let me explain. Back in April, we spent $50 to incorporate a debt acquisition company online in Mississippi and, incidentally, over the Internet is the best way to experience Mississippi. We called it. We called it Central Asset Recovery Professionals or cup after the bottom feeding fish. I became chairman of the board and cart, set up this very bland website and dipped our toes into the debt market. And with little more to go on than that website, we were soon offered a portfolio of nearly $15 million of out of statute medical debt from Texas at a cost of less than half a cent on the dollar, which is less than 60 grand. For that amount, Carp would be sent to the personal information, including names, current addresses and Social Security numbers of nearly 9000 people. So we bought it, which is absolutely terrifying because it means if I wanted to, I could legally have cars, take possession of that list and have employees start calling people turning their lives upside down over medical debt they no longer had to pay. There would be absolutely nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that absolutely everything is wrong with that. And that is why we actually decided to go another way, because we thought were instead of collecting on the money, why not forgive it? Because on one hand it's obviously the right thing to do. But much more importantly, we'd be staging the largest one time giveaway in television show history because, as best we can tell, the most anyone has ever given away on a TV show At one time to date was this Yeah, yeah, now that give away was worth nearly $8 million but we bought nearly twice that in medical debt. So instead of having the file center carp, we had the seller send it directly to a non profit organization which specializes in forgiving medical debt with no tax consequences for the debtor. And tonight, at my signal, with the power vested in me as chairman of the Board of Car, they will commence the debt forgiving process. So what do you say? Are you ready to make television history? Let's now. Clearly, this is only going to help 9000 people whose medical debt we bought. The larger issue is we need much clearer rules and tougher oversight to protect consumers from potentially predatory companies like the one that we set up. But in the meantime, it seems the least we can do with this debt that I cannot can believe we are allowed to own is to give it away. So, are you ready to do this? You are about to watch me give away $15 million. You Oprah? Uh huh.