Whistleblower Group

November 19, 2014

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that eight residents of Miami-Dade County and three residents of Nicaragua have been charged for their alleged participation in a $25M Medicare, Medicaid, and wire fraud scheme. As alleged in the indictment, the defendants recruited individuals who resided in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic to enroll in Medicare Advantage plans and Florida Medicaid by falsely representing in enrollment applications that they resided in Florida. Additionally, the defendants caused physicians associated with Pharmovisa Inc., Axis Le Professional Medical Group, Inc. and Rodney Montoya Corp. to be designated as the primary care physicians for the beneficiaries residing in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. FL

November 19, 2014

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Office and the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint against multiple companies operating multi-million dollar schemes to sell tech support services to consumers nationwide, many of whom are senior citizens. The defendants, Inbound Call Experts, Super PC Support, Vast Tech Support, LLC and related entities, allegedly operated a technical support scam that exploited consumers’ fears of viruses, malware and other security threats to their computers and used deceptive online advertisements and telephone calls to convince consumers to run scans on their computers to detect errors. According to the investigation, the defendants ran scans on consumers’ computers and then charged for repairs when the computers actually had no performance problems. Consumers paid up to $500 for repairs in addition to other charges for software. This scheme has caused more than $22 million in consumer injury. FL

November 19, 2014

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, the Federal Trade Commission, and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced an agreement under which ScoreSense, owned by One Technologies, a Texas-based business that also operated MyCreditHealth and marketed through at least 50 websites, including FreeScore360.com, FreeScoreOnline.com, and ScoreSense.com, has agreed to change its business practices and pay $22M to resolve claims it deceptively marketed its online credit monitoring services. According to the government, ScoreSense bought advertising on search engines such as Google and Bing so that ads for the websites appeared near the top of search results when consumers looked for terms such as “free credit report,” but the company failed to adequately disclose that by accessing their score, consumers would be enrolled in a credit monitoring program costing $29.95 per month until they called to cancel. OH

November 17, 2014

TRUSTe, Inc., a major provider of privacy certifications for online businesses, has agreed to settle FTC charges that it deceived consumers about its recertification program for company’s privacy practices, as well as perpetuated its misrepresentation as a non-profit entity. The FTC alleges that from 2006 until January 2013, TRUSTe failed to conduct annual recertifications of companies holding TRUSTe privacy seals in over 1,000 incidences, despite providing information on its website that companies holding TRUSTe Certified Privacy Seals receive recertification every year. FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said “TRUSTe promised to hold companies accountable for protecting consumer privacy, but it fell short of that pledge.” FTC

November 13, 2014

The CFTC settled charges against Rosenthal Collins Group, LLC for failing to supervise an Associated Person and for failing to provide and maintain an adequate program of supervision over trading.  CFTC