"Woman's on the Hook for a $25,000 Student Loan She Never Knew Existed"

Mandi Woodruff put out a recent article about a woman, Alice Cortes, who somehow owes $25,000 to Sallie Mae. What's the main problem? She co-signed for a person who seems to not exist.

I have heard from a number of people who paid off their loans, only to later learn that the loan was somehow turned over to collections and still existed. Several of them learned about these loans after they tried to buy homes, and they discovered that their credit was ruined.

In this case, Cortes never took out the loan for this individual, so she is at a loss to determine how to solve the problem.

Have you ever discovered a loan in default when you pulled your credit score, even though you paid it off years earlier? Has a lender ever pursued you for a loan that you never co-signed on?

In my view, this is another example of how out of control the lending industry is - there is essentially no oversight, so lenders have full power over people. In this case, they are apparently tracking down a woman who never even signed for a loan.