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Other Federal Enforcement

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January 16, 2015

Two payday lending companies, AMG Services, Inc. and MNE Services, Inc., have settled FTC charges that they violated the law by charging consumers undisclosed and inflated fees. Under the proposed settlement the companies will pay $21 million – the largest FTC recovery in a payday lending case – and will waive another $285 million in charges that were assessed but not collected. The FTC noted that “the settlement requires these companies to turn over millions of dollars that they took from financially-distressed consumers, and waive hundreds of millions in other charges.” FTC

January 6, 2015

The FTC has approved a final amendment to its Cooling-Off Rule that increases the exclusionary limit for certain “door-to-door” sales. The Cooling-Off Rule previously provided that it is unfair and deceptive for sellers engaged in “door-to-door” sales valued at more than $25 to fail to provide consumers with disclosures regarding their right to cancel the sales contract within three business days of the transaction. Under the final rule, the revised definition of “door-to-door sales” distinguishes between sales at a buyer’s residence and those at other locations. The revised definition retains coverage for sales made at a buyer’s residence that have a purchase price of $25 or more, and it increases the purchase price to $130 or more for all other covered sales at temporary locations. FTC

December 31, 2014

The FTC has approved a final order settling charges that Snapchat deceived consumers with promises about the disappearing nature of messages sent through the service. According to the FTC’s complaint, Snapchat also deceived consumers over the amount of personal data it collected and the security measures taken to protect that data from misuse and unauthorized disclosure. The settlement prohibits Snapchat from misrepresenting the extent to which it maintains the privacy, security, or confidentiality of users’ information. In addition, the company will be required to implement a comprehensive privacy program that will be monitored by an independent privacy professional for the next 20 years. FTC

December 23, 2014

The FTC charges data broker LeapLab with selling the sensitive personal information of hundreds of thousands of consumers – including Social Security and bank account numbers – to scammers who allegedly debited millions from their accounts. According to the FTC’s complaint, the company bought payday loan applications of financially strapped consumers, and then sold that information to marketers whom it knew had no legitimate need for it. At least one of those marketers, Ideal Financial Solutions – a defendant in another FTC case – allegedly used the information to withdraw millions of dollars from consumers’ accounts without their authorization. FTC

December 22, 2014

The FTC charged Your Yellow Book Inc., Brandie Michelle Law, Dustin Robert Law, and their father, Robert Ray Law with defrauding small businesses and nonprofits by charging them for online business directory listings they had not ordered or received – their deceptive tactics included unsolicited telemarketing calls and bogus invoices with the walking fingers image often associated with local yellow page directories. Defendants are banned from telemarketing, and they will pay $1.7 million to reimburse consumers who lost money to the scam. FTC

December 11, 2014

A federal court has entered orders against 22 mortgage company defendants who offered financially strapped consumers fake home-loan modification services that the FTC claims violated the FTC Act and the Mortgage Assistance Relief Services Rule. The FTC alleged the defendants operated as two loan modification enterprises, each of which falsely claimed it would provide legal help to save consumers’ homes from foreclosure and lower their mortgage payments. The enterprises then charged up-front fees of between $2,500 and $3,500, but delivered little or no help, deepening the consumers’ financial distress. The orders impose monetary judgments in varying amounts to remedy the almost $51 million of consumer injury from the defendants’ activities and collectively ban the defendants from advertising, promoting, or selling unsecured debt relief products and services; misrepresenting any material facts related to financial products or services; misrepresenting material facts related to any other types of services; and benefiting from any consumer information they collected through the scheme. FTC

December 5, 2014

The settlement involving Google unfairly billing for in-app purchases receives final approval. The order resolves allegations that Google billed consumers millions of dollars for charges incurred by children without consent from account holders. When Google first introduced in-app charges to the Google Play store in 2011, the FTC’s complaint alleged, Google billed for such charges without any password requirement or other method to obtain account holder authorization. FTC

December 3, 2014

PaymentsMD, LLC settled FTC charges alleging they misled thousands of consumers who signed up for an online billing portal by failing to adequately inform them that the company would seek highly detailed medical information from pharmacies, medical labs and insurance companies. The FTC alleges the companies used the sign-up process for a “Patient Portal” — where consumers could view their billing history — as a pathway to deceptively seek consumers’ consent to obtain detailed medical information about the consumers to create patient profiles. FTC

November 20, 2014

Consumer Collection Advocates, Corp. agreed to stop operating an advance fee recovery scheme for the duration of the on-going litigation with the FTC. The FTC seeks to permanently stop the operation, which in the past year took close to $1.3 million from consumers, many of them elderly people who had lost money to timeshare resale and precious metal investment frauds. According to the FTC’s complaint, telemarketers for the company called consumers and falsely guaranteed that, for an up-front fee, typically 20 percent of the amount they lost, the defendants would recover substantial amounts of money for them – 60 percent or more – within 30 to 180 days. The FTC alleges few, if any, consumers received any money. FTC

November 19, 2014

One Technologies group settles with the FTC for running an online scheme that allegedly lured consumers with “free” access to their credit scores and then billed them a recurring fee of nearly $30 dollars for a credit monitoring program they never ordered. The credit monitoring programs, MyCreditHealth and ScoreSense, were marketed through at least 50 websites, including FreeScore360.com, FreeScoreOnline.com and ScoreSense.com. According to the FTC, they bought advertising on search engines such as Google and Bing so that ads for their websites appeared near the top of search results when consumers looked for terms such as “free credit report.” The FTC alleges the defendants failed to clearly disclose that consumers who accessed their credit score through their websites would be enrolled in a credit monitoring program and incur monthly charges until they called the defendants to cancel. FTC
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