Pretended to encourage debts (8)
I believe the answer is:
spurious
'pretended' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'encourage debts' is the wordplay.
'encourage' becomes 'spur' (spurring is a kind of encouraging).
'debts' becomes 'ious'.
'spur'+'ious'='SPURIOUS'
'to' is the link.
(Other definitions for spurious that I've seen before include "deceitful!" , "Inauthentic" , "Faked" , "fraudulent" , "False, fake" .)