I don't know about that, leejosepho. I think our OP is confused about some things.

Here's one of them. Where did you get this expression "charged off," and what do you think it means? You seem to be using it incorrectly.

The money that is owed to a business by a customer is called an account receivable. It is an asset that the business owns. It is an asset like the desks and chairs in the offices of that business. A business can sell any asset it owns. A business can sell a debt that is owed to it. That's not a scam. That's a large part of what gies on in the financial world. You owe me some money let's say. I have an IOU from you that says so. I can sell that IOU to anyone else. Then it becomes their asset that they own. They, in turn can resell it. That goes on all the time. That happens to be what financial markets are all about, to a large extent. One debt collector can sell a debt to another debt collector. Often debt collectors work for other businesses to help collect a debt that still belongs to the other business, typically for a commission. That's getting to be more common today. In that case, the collection company doesn't own the debt. They haven't "bought" the debt. A company can't try to collect on a debt that they have actually sold to another company, and they don't.

Here's a definition of "charged off" -

"A charge-off or chargeoff is the declaration by a creditor (usually a credit card account) that an amount of debt is unlikely to be collected. This occurs when a consumer becomes severely delinquent on a debt. Traditionally, creditors will make this declaration at the point of six months without payment. A charge-off is a form of write-off.

Legal consequences of a charge-off

While a charge-off is considered to be "written off as uncollectable" by the bank, the debt is still legally valid, and remains as such after the fact. The creditor has the right to legally collect the full amount for the time periods permitted by the statutes of limitation based on the location of the bank and where the consumer resides. Depending on the location, this amount of time may be a certain number of years (e.g. 3 to 7 years), or in some places, indefinitely. Methods of collection that can be used include contacts from internal collections staff, outside collection agencies, arbitration, or a lawsuit."

Charging off a debt means that a company can no longer count it as an asset. When a company charges off an asset - any asset - the company's net worth goes down. The company is not worth as much as it was. So companies don't really gain anything by "charging off" a debt. Doing so just makes the company officially poorer than it was. They don't get a tax deduction for "charging off" an asset, like a debt. This is not comparable to "writing off" an expense to reduce taxable income.

But don't worry about any of that. It's not your concern. It's the concern of the business who does it.

What you're kind of getting at, and this is true, is that no more than one business can own a debt at any given point in time. You can't owe the same debt to two businesses at the same time. But that's not what anyone is trying to do, usually.

A company sells a debt to another company for less than its full face value. They "charge off" the difference as an asset that no longer exists on their books. But the party that bought the debt certainly can try and collect it. They can try and collect the full amount of the debt. There's no scam going on when that happens.

Here's another new little wrinkle that's come up, thanks to new federal law. If a company that owns a debt from you decides to give up trying to collect it, and doesn't sell it to someone else, then the IRS considers that just like the company added to your income. This typically happens when the statute of limitations runs out. You may get a notice from your creditor saying that they have "forgiven" the debt. This makes that amount of money just like income you worked for. That's what tge IRA considers it. So your income for that year goes up by exactly the amount you were "forgiven," and you owe tax on it, depending what income bracket it puts you in. By the way the term "forgiven' doesn't mean the company is treating you nice. They still are reporting it to the credit bureaus as a default.