According to the Federal Trade Commission, federal courts in New York and Georgia, acting on an FTC motion, have temporarily halted three debt collection operations that the FTC alleges have violated federal law by threatening and deceiving consumers via text messages, emails, and phone calls. The FTC's press release explains: [T]he defendants used text messages, […]
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Last week, a Missouri jury awarded about a quarter-million dollars in compensatory and $82 million in punitive damages to a woman who was hounded for over a year by debt collector Portfolio Recovery Associates for a $1100 debt that wasn’t hers. The problem, according to the plaintiff’s lawyer, is the debt collector tries to collect […]
"The magnitude of falsity, conservatively measured, is enormous," wrote U.S. District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York near the start of her a 361-page ruling in Federal Housing Finance Agency v. Nomura Holding America, decided last week after a four-week trial. The core question at issue in the case, in which […]
Credit reporting agencies Experian, Equifax and TransUnion have agreed to pay $6 million to resolve an investigation by the attorney generals of 31 states into customer disputes over errors in their credit reports, fraud and identity theft. The three companies agreed to limit their marketing, wait longer before adding medical debt to a credit record, […]
The Hill reports that two senators are calling on Attorney General Loretta Lynch to take action against companies selling illegal drugs masquerading as dietary supplements. In a joint letter to Lynch on Tuesday, Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) asked the Department of Justice to enforce the dietary supplements rules and take punitive […]
Read this fascinating first-hand account of ten months in the life of a debt collector. The author's conclusion: "My agonizing time as a debt collector did have one bright spot … . After spending ten months wallowing in the misery of others, I'd found it hard to be depressed myself." (Warning for sensitive readers: the […]
The NYT reports today: Adding another entry to Wall Street’s growing rap sheet, five big banks have agreed to pay more than $5 billion and plead guilty to multiple crimes related to manipulating foreign currencies and interest rates, federal and state authorities announced on Wednesday. The Justice Department forced four of the banks — Citigroup, […]
Updating an earlier complaint to the FTC, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and Center for Digital Democracy charge that Google engages in false and deceptive advertising by marketing its YouTube Kids as appropriate for children under five despite containing material about child suicide, unsafe behaviors such as playing with matches and tasting battery acid, and […]
The Japanese airbag-manufacturer Takata announced this week it would expand its recall of defective airbags to up to 34 million vehicles. The New York Times reports that six deaths and over a hundred injuries have resulted from the flaw, which can cause the airbags to explode violently on deployment, spraying metal at passengers. As we’ve […]
Bloomberg reports that Harold Hamm, billionaire CEO of oil company Continental Resources, tried to get University of Oklahoma scientists fired for their research. This report comes just a few weeks after Oklahoma's government confirmed that the hundreds of earthquakes the state has experienced in recent years are, in fact, caused by oil and gas operations […]