5 Inspiring Real-Life Stories Of The Little Guy Winning

5

A Lone Salesman Took Down A Massive Phantom Debt Racket

You might want to sit down for this: People who work in payday lending and debt collection aren't always the straightest of arrows. We'll give you time to gather your displaced monocles. Anyway, the scummiest tactic found among this crowd is called "phantom debt." Sharks and collectors try to convince downtrodden debtors to pay fake debts, knowing they don't have the energy to fight back. Unfortunately for the phantom debt industry, they made a formidable enemy. No, not the IRS, the CIA, or the Avengers. Some guy named Andy.

In 2015, ace salesman Andrew Therrien started getting calls saying he owed $700 on a payday loan which he'd never taken. Therrien, a straight shooter, told the collector to buzz off. Then he threatened to come over and rape Therrien's wife. (Did we mention these people have rats for souls? We didn't? Well, they do.) So Therrien did what every middle-class white-collar husband would do: He launched a years-long scorched-earth crusade against the U.S. debt collection industry, with the goal of discovering who had fabricated his phantom debt and make him pay.

Bloomberg BusinessweekWe dare you to read that and not hear a clap of ominous thunder.

Therrien, a dogged moralist and virtuoso phone negotiator, turned himself into the Dick Tracy of tracing dicks. At night he would harass collectors by phoning them nonstop until they gave up a name, slowly building a network of scumbag informants. When the leads went cold, he would occasionally make small payments on his fake loans just to see where the money would travel. To his family and friends, he was but a promotional salesman who spent a bit too much time locked away in his home office. But to loan sharks, he was the main character from Taken -- Liam Taken, we're pretty sure his name was.

Therrien tracked the kingpin of this massive network of phantom debt collection to Kansas City. Joel Tucker had packaged $7.7 million in fake debt through loan packages and sold it off to the shadiest bidders, including the person who threatened Therrien. Therrien confronted Tucker over the phone, whereupon he claimed he had no idea his company had systematically and intentionally ruined thousands of people's lives. But that only made Therrien angrier. He leaned on his network of contacts until he obtained hard proof of Tucker's heinous crimes. He mailed all his evidence to the FTC, who nearly tripped over their own shoes bringing him in to help bring Tucker's empire down.

In 2016, Joel Tucker was ordered by a judge to pay $34.2 million -- money he claimed not to have and which, in what had to be the sweetest of ironies, would permanently drown him in debt.

4

A High School Newspaper Exposed An International Human Trafficking Ring

Before 1999, the biggest story a high school newspaper had ever broken was "Pigeon Disappearances Linked To New Chicken Finger Tuesdays." But then along came a team of plucky journalists from Berkeley, California, who launched an investigation so hard-hitting that it made Woodward and Bernstein look like E! reporters making puns about Hugh Jackman's odd sweater choices.

3

An Unlikely Couple Took Down An Evil Prison Warden

It sounds like a weird Lifetime movie. Frances Jalet became one of the first American women to graduate with a law degree, but found there was no work for female lawyers, so she spent some time as a housewife before finally returning to the law in her 50s. Fred Cruz was a clever 20-something man from the wrong side of the tracks who got himself locked up for armed robbery. When they met, they fell in love. But, somewhat importantly, they also changed the Texas penal system forever.

Back in the '60s, George Beto ran Texas prisons like Hell on Earth. Prisoners were isolated, beaten, and even tortured for the smallest infractions. If The Shawshank Redemption had been set in Texas, it would have been called Hostel 4. But Beto was untouchable, because no one was insane enough to go after a sociopath with government backing who was willing to break every statute in the Geneva Convention for kicks. No one but Fred Cruz. In 1967, fed up with the inhumane treatment he and his fellow inmates were receiving under Beto's regime, Cruz wrote to Jalet, whom he had read about in the papers. She agreed to visit Cruz, who told her horrifying stories about his prison time. And amidst the blood, oppression, and human rights violation, the two fell in love.

Jalet Family/Texas MonthlyGives a whole new meaning to the term "jailbait."

2

It's Free To Sing "Happy Birthday" Because Of One Determined Filmmaker

Have you ever wondered why "Happy Birthday" is the go-to birthday song for the entire English-speaking world? That was the question filmmaker Jennifer Nelson had, so she created an entire documentary about the song. When we have questions, we google them or just live with disappointment. Different strokes.

1

A Hospital Chief Went Undercover To Take Down Government Corruption

In 2003, Edward Hospital CEO Pamela Davis wanted to build a new medical office in Plainfield, Illinois, where ailing folks had to undergo a 20-minute jungle navigation to get their rashes checked out. But before she could even present her plan to the board, banker P. Nicholas Hurtgen told her she needed hire a very specific contractor if she wanted approval. Davis knew extortion when she heard it, ignored the threat, and ... got outright rejected.

But instead of playing ball, Davis decided to kick them right where it hurt. A novice in the vigilante department, she had to ring up directory assistance for the FBI, which agreed to put a wire in her bra and listen in on a meeting with Hurtgen and the shady contractor. Mere minutes into the conversation, the feds called Davis on the phone to tell her she was being extorted and needed to get the hell out of there.

On that day, Davis became both an undercover informant and the catalyst for something called Operation Board Games, a statewide sting to expose and destroy a "pay to play" extortion racket. Over the years, Davis helped exposed multilevel government corruption, even netting Governor Rod Blagojevich when he tried to sell President's Obama's former Senate seat to the highest bidder. Davis kept up the charade for seven months, until an article in The Chicago Sun-Times exposed her as a spy, which must've been quite the breakfast read for her husband and three kids.

U.S. Marshals ServiceAfter which political corruption in Illinois was cleaned up forever ... r-right?