One summer evening in August 2021, April Washington looked out the window of her Dorchester home and saw her Ford truck being towed away.

Thinking she’d been robbed, the single mother quickly headed to the police station. She was surprised to find that a Massachusetts court had approved a debt buyer’s request to take her property as a way to make her pay about $1,200 the company said she owed on a nearly 20-year-old credit card bill.

Washington was…