The Predatory Givers
Meet Craig Antico and Jerry Ashton, two former debt collectors in New York who wiped away $6.7 billion of medical debt for millions of low-income Americans.
After decades of chasing people who couldn’t afford their bills, Craig and Jerry rose to the top of their game. Craig grew up in the collections industry, working in his family’s business before moving onto bigger clients like IBM, and Jerry was a four-plus decade veteran of the credit and collections industry.
In 2011, Jerry glanced out his office window and saw the Occupy Wall Street protest gathering in Zuccotti Park. As a child of the 1960s, he felt an old stirring and went down to take a closer look. When the protesters discovered there was a debt collector in their midst, things could have turned bad for Jerry, but instead of opposition he was offered an intriguing proposition.
Occupy were looking for someone to help launch the ‘Rolling Jubilee’, a crowdfunding project to raise $50k with the aim of purchasing $1m of defaulted debt and abolishing it. Jerry called his friend and fellow-executive Craig, who instantly jumped on board, and together the pair helped Occupy abolish $40 million in medical and student loan debt.
Then the unexpected happened: the protestors moved onto the next project and shut Jubilee down. But Craig and Jerry couldn’t let the idea go. After years of chasing money, they were hooked on making a difference and in 2014 launched RIP Medical Debt.
Despite all their experience and good intentions, the charity struggled to make it through its first year. “It was the hardest thing we ever did. We thought it would be easy to raise $500,000, but we struggled to raise $3,000.”
In 2016, two years into the venture, fate intervened again when talk-show host John Oliver purchased a medical debt portfolio worth $14.9 million and donated it to RIP on live television. The charity became an internet sensation and overnight, Jerry and Craig’s fledgling mission grew into a movement, propelled by a flurry of donations.
Over the past eight years RIP has changed the lives of 3.6 million Americans. The charity bestows its blessings randomly but seeks out patients who earn up to four times below the national poverty level. For recipients, the arrival of the thin yellow envelope instantly wipes away years of financial burden and opens up the possibility of a new beginning.
Millions of people are sitting at the kitchen table trying to decide, ‘do I buy medication today or do I pay the water bill, or do I pay the debt collector?’ We simply decided to take the debt collector out of the equation.Jerry Ashton
