The L.A. Times has an excellent article adding to the coverage about Wells Fargo’s use of forced arbitration clauses and how the clauses allowed the bank to deflect consumer fraud allegations over its employees’ practice of opening bogus customer accounts. The article gives important attention to the bank’s inclusion of delegation clauses in its arbitration […]
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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday sued the credit repair company Prime Marketing Holdings, LLC, which the CFPB alleges charged consumers a series of illegal advance fees and misrepresented the cost and effectiveness of its services. The CFPB is seeking to halt the company’s harmful conduct and to obtain relief for consumers, including refunds […]
The Federal Trade Commission issued a few press releases last Thursday and Friday that may be of interest: FTC Wins Summary Judgment against Marketers of Supplement That Claimed To Prevent or Reverse Gray Hair (Sept. 23) FTC Action: Court Bans Mortgage Relief Scammers from Debt Relief Business (Sept. 22) FTC Charges Fake Prize Scheme Operators […]
by Paul Alan Levy In Doe v. Coleman, a decision issued yesterday, the Kentucky Supreme Court overruled a decision of the state court of appeals which, considering the validity of a subpoena to identify defendants who had been sued for defamation based on comments about a local official, had held that the plaintiff officials’ conclusory […]
The Washington Post had this report on yesterday's congressional hearing: The CEO of Wells Fargo faced accusations of fraud and calls for his resignation Tuesday from harshly critical senators at a hearing over allegations that bank employees opened millions of accounts customers didn’t know about to meet sales quotas. Members of the Senate Banking Committee […]
Last week Florida’s Sun Sentinel published a three-part series about the Gulf Coast’s raw oyster industry and consumers who have been sickened or killed after consuming raw oysters containing Vibrio vulnificus, a type of bacteria that thrives in Gulf waters. The series describes how elected leaders in Gulf states distorted facts about the cost of […]
The Wall Street Journal reports: Prepaid cards, which started out as simple gift cards from retail stores, have morphed into popular financial-management tools with functions that rival bank checking accounts. Now regulators are playing catch-up, with plans to roll out a rule this fall that would bring oversight of the sector closer to regulations covering […]
Wells Fargo, the country’s largest retail bank and an institution once thought above the fray of financial crisis era scandals, has been under fire this week after acknowledging it had fired 5,300 employees over the past five years for opening as many as 2 million sham accounts customers didn’t ask for. The San Francisco-based bank, which […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has this blog post. The post notes that "over 90 percent of African-American and 72 percent of Latino students leave college with student loan debt, compared to 66 percent of white students and 51 percent of Asian-American students."
by Paul Alan Levy News comes from Chris Morran over at Consumerist that the House version of a bill banning non-disparagement clauses in form consumer contracts, which passed the Senate late last year, was passed on a voice vote in the House of Representatives today. Looks as if this bill will become law before the […]