Susan Wilson?s million-dollar idea came seven years ago during a nightly “how was your day” conversation with her husband, Christan, who worked as a court researcher.
“He met someone with a judgment [in his favor] and helped him figure out what to do,” she said. “The light bulb went off, it all kind of came together.”
They started The Judgment Group in 2000, a Stevensville-based company that tracks down where debtors work, bank and live, and files court documents to get them to pay up.
Susan Wilson has a background in technology and uses a wide variety of personal-information databases to track down debtors.
It?s an idea that has paid off.
She was one of 10 winners this year of the national Make Mine a Million $ Business competition.
The company?s average contract is for judgments of $5,000 to $10,000, though she said in one instance the company recovered approximately $250,000 in a 12-year-old judgment over a Baltimore City land deal.
While the people she finds aren?t eager to pay up, Wilson said they rarely take it out on her.
“By the time it gets to us, they know they owe the money,” she said.
Joe Ciccone, president of Crown Motors in Baltimore, sought out Wilson?s help in collecting on several hundred judgments worth a total of about $2 million. His family-owned business had previously tried to collect on its own, he said.
“You?ve gotta do all this stuff that we don?t have the time or the patience to do,” Ciccone said. “I like having her on my side.”
The company?s success stems from Wilson?s ability to electronically track down personal information, said Gene Ransom, one of the Judgment Group?s lawyers.
“She?s using the technology better,” he said. “She?s using what?s available in such a way that she?s able to cut a lot of time out of the process, and that results in her collecting more on these judgments.”
