June 1, 2017

A Federal court has granted a request from the FTC and the State of Georgia to permanently bar the deceptive business practices of an electronics buyback company that misled consumers about the amount of money it would pay them for selling their used smartphones, tablets and other devices. The court also ordered the company’s owner to pay more than $42 million. In granting the request for default judgement, the court agreed with the allegations in the FTC’s complaint that Laptop & Desktop Repair, LLC and its owner Vadim Olegovich Kruchinin earned millions by promising to buy back consumers’ used electronic devices for much more money than the defendants actually provided. After consumers provided basic information on the company’s website about the type and condition of the electronic device they wanted to sell, the defendants would provide consumers with a quote for the amount a seller would receive for the device. Yet once consumers sent in their devices to the defendants, the defendants dropped their offer price to as little as 3 percent to 10 percent of the original quote. FTC