In two cases from the Northern District of California, Le v. Sunlan corporation, 2014 WL 296032 (N.D.Cal. 2014)and Skinner v. Mountain Lion Acquisitions, et. al., 2014 WL 314425 (N.D.Cal.), borrowers brought a suit alleging FDCPA violations and malicious prosecution against debt buyers. The two debt buyers purchased the borrowers’ payday loans from the originating lender, and subsequently sued to collect on the debt. The Borrowers in return alleged that the debt sale voided their debt, basing these allegations on a reading of a California statute detailing to whom an unlicensed agency may sell promissory notes. The Court dismissed both borrowers’ claims, holdling that the plain language of a statute naming the types of entities (banks, trusts) that could purchase promissory notes from an unlicensed agency did not mean that only those types of agencies could purchase debt. Thus, a debt buying corporation that was not a bank or a trust was able to legally purchase the debt. So, it was not a “misrepresentation of the legal status of the debt” under the FDCPA to tell the borrowers that this debt could be legally collected by the debt buyer. Moreover, the court relied on administrative regulations interpreting the statute, which stated that the statute applied only to real estate-backed loans.