On December 21, 2021, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it reached an agreement with a California-based fintech company that would require the company to cease “(1) making new loans; (2) collecting on outstanding loans to harmed consumers; (3) selling consumer information; and (4) making misrepresentations when providing loans or collecting debt or helping…
On December 14, 2021, the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DPFI) announced that it entered what it described as a “novel” consent order with a Los Angeles-based automobile title loan lender prohibiting the company from marketing or servicing title loans under $10,000 with interest rates above 36 percent within the state of California for the next…
On November 30, the District of Columbia Attorney General’s Office (DC AG) announced a settlement with an online lender targeting consumers with below-average credit, under which the lender agreed to pay $1.5 million in refunds to consumers and $250,000 to the District, and to waive over $640,000 in interest. Further, the agreement obligates the lender to reduce its interest…
On July 29, 2021, the FTC announced that it had reached a $450,000 settlement with the owner and manager of a group of auto dealerships. In a complaint originally filed in 2018 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, the FTC alleged that the owner, with his group of car dealerships,…
On July 29, 2021, the FTC announced it would be sending approximately $2.3 in refund checks to consumers who lost money in credit card relief schemes. The 7,786 refund checks average $293 each. The relief is part of a settlement the FTC reached with multiple defendants in two actions filed jointly with…
On June 8, 2020 the Washington Attorney General’s office (Washington AG) announced that a consent order had been reached with a Colorado-based debt collection agency that would require the agency to pay $475,000 to approximately 5,000 Washington consumers to resolve a lawsuit originally filed in April 2020 in Washington state…
On May 28, 2021, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healy (Massachusetts AG) announced a settlement with a bank, acting as an agent for lenders, which requires the bank to permanently discharge debts and return payments made by certain former students of a regional for-profit university. The settlement requires the bank to refund over $30,000 in recent loan repayments made by certain Massachusetts borrowers…
On April 22, the CFPB announced that it and the NY AG had filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York seeking to seize a $1.6 million home they allege was fraudulently transferred by the owner of a shuttered debt-collection scheme. According to the CFPB, after discovering the federal and state…
On December 30, 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it had entered into a consent order with a lender that provided installment loans to consumers affiliated with the military over the lender’s alleged violations of the Military Lending Act (MLA), Electronic Fund Transfer Act (EFTA), and Consumer…
On September 29, 2020 the Arizona Attorney General (AG) announced that it had filed a lawsuit in Arizona state court against two individual owners of debt collection businesses alleging that, on phone calls to consumers nationwide, they made false statements and threats to convince consumers to pay debts the defendants…
On August 18, 2020, the Colorado Attorney General (Colorado AG) announced a settlement with two bank and two non-bank lenders for allegedly exceeding state interest rate limits on consumer loans. The case resolves two cases that were originally filed in Denver District Court and have been pending since 2017. The…
On June 5, 2020, the Attorney General for the District of Columbia (DC AG) announced that it had filed a complaint in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia against an online lender for allegedly making illegal loans to over 2,500 DC consumers in violation of the Consumer Protection…
On April 2, 2020, the California Department of Business Oversight (DBO) announced that it filed a lawsuit against a student loan servicer servicing over 900,000 Californians as part of the DBO’s investigation into whether the loan servicer was improperly converting federal Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH)…
On March 15, 2020, the California Department of Business Oversight (DBO) announced a settlement with a point-of-sale lender that offered an allegedly illegal “buy now, pay later” option targeted to young consumers. After an investigation, DBO concluded that these loans were illegal because the lender did not have the requisite…