On November 12, 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that on it had filed a lawsuit against a collection of interrelated companies and individual defendants for allegedly misrepresenting themselves as affiliated with the Department of Education in order to convince consumers to sign up for student loan debt relief. The…
On October 30, 2019, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced an action to halt a student-loan debt-relief operation engaged in allegedly unlawful conduct. The CFPB filed its complaint on October 21, 2019 and requested a temporary restraining order in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California….
On September 12, 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had settled lawsuits against the operators of two alleged student loan debt relief schemes, and a financing company that assisted them, alleging that they had bilked millions of dollars from consumers. The FTC alleged that the defendants violated…
On August 12, 2019, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced a proposed settlement with a for-profit higher-education institution. The CFPB filed a complaint against the institution in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on February 26, 2014, alleging that the institution had violated the Consumer…
On August 7, 2019, the Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (“Massachusetts AG”) announced that it filed a complaint and consent judgment in Suffolk County Superior Court. The consent judgment bans a purportedly unlicensed finance company from collecting on any active student loan debt relief accounts in Massachusetts, and requires the company to pay $340,000 to repair the credit of…
On July 11, 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had obtained a temporary restraining order against defendants operating an alleged student loan debt relief scheme that, according to the FTC, tricked thousands of consumers by making false claims that it would service and pay down their student…
On July 11, 2019, the Massachusetts Office of Attorney General Maura Healey announced that a for-profit educational institution and its parent company would provide over $1.6 million in debt relief to settle claims that it did not provide its students with critical information on program job placement, loan repayment, and…
On June 14, 2019, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced a settlement with a private student loan provider that issued and managed student loans at the now-defunct for-profit ITT Technical Institute. Forty-five states including Kansas, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Oregon, and New York also settled with the loan…
On February 25, 2019, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that, after a public comment period, it approved a final consent order that had been negotiated in October of 2018 with an online student loan refinancer. The FTC had charged the company with misrepresenting how much student loan borrowers could save if they refinanced their loans through the company’s television, print,…
On January 2, 2019, 49 state attorneys general reached a settlement with an Illinois-based for-profit education company, securing approximately $493.7 million in debt relief for over 179,000 students nationwide. The settlement is the result of a five-year investigation, which began in 2014 after states received complaints from students and the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions…