Please don't take this as legal advice, but it sounds to me like this C/A is simply fishing. From what you've stated, they are asking for money without having any legal claim to those funds. That said, so what if they are threatening a lawsuit? If I were in your shoes I'd force the bastards to obtain a judgement before simply caving to their demands w/o just cause.

No. There was no court order, so I didn't pay the fine when it was initially charged. It is my understanding that they have no rights to collect any value from me until (if) a court order exists. The fact that it was shifted to a collection agency that is now threatening to sue is what I am concerned about.

This civil recovery letter, is that backed up (i/e: enforced) by a court order? If not, then I'm curious as to how the store can asign any random value to this "fine"?

I have recently been charged with shoplifting, but the charge was released from court with a diversion, which was paid at the time, and resolved on my first appearance. This is my first offense.

I received a civil recovery letter for $500, (the amount stolen was $100, all recovered by the store). I read quite a bit of advice, and based on the information that I researched, decided to ignore the claim letter. I have now just received a letter from a separate collection agency, threatening to sue if the amount is not paid. It said that action will be taken if payment is not received within three days of the date of the letter. I only found the letter today, about two weeks after the fact. I am not sure how seriously to take this threat, and how I should respond. I am looking for some advice with how to proceed at this point. $500 seems like a huge amount of money, when everything was reclaimed, and the whole process only took about two hours at the store.