On March 9, 2020, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office (Massachusetts AG) announced that it had entered into a consent judgment with a national used car company resolving allegations that the company’s local Massachusetts franchise engaged in predatory lending and deceptive sales of defective vehicles. According to the Massachusetts AG’s complaint, filed in September 2017, the company…
On February 20, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs, and Arkansas Attorney General’s Office announced that they had filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina against a group of defendants who brokered contracts offering high-interest credit to…
On January 30, 2020, the CFPB filed a complaint against a national bank in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island. The complaint alleges that the bank violated the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), 15 U.S.C. § 1601 et seq., TILA’s implementing Regulation Z, 12 C.F.R. pt. 1026, and the Consumer…
On January 27, 2020, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein (North Carolina AG) reached a settlement with an out-of-state payday lender for $825,000. The Attorney General obtained a consent temporary restraining order against the lender in May 2019 based on allegations that the lender was not licensed to operate in North Carolina, yet…
On January 21, 2020, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office (Massachusetts AG) announced that it has secured $1.25 million from one of the country’s largest online lending companies to resolve allegations that the company charged excessive interest rates to Massachusetts borrowers in violation of M.G.L. ch. 93A and Massachusetts’ Small Loan Statute, M.G.L. c. 140 s. 96, which prohibits any personal…
On January 17, 2020, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settled with several operators of a credit repair scheme for alleged violations of sections 13(b) and 19 of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 53(b) and 57b, Section 410(b) of the Credit Repair Organizations Act (CROA), 15 U.S.C. § 1679h(b), Section 6(b) of the…
On January 16, 2020, the California Department of Business Oversight (DBO) announced it had reached a settlement with a point-of-sale lender to stop making illegal loans and refund $282,000 in fees it collected from almost 17,000 California consumers. In September 2019, the lender applied to the California DBO for a lender’s license. Upon review of the lender’s product and information, the California…
On January 10, 2020, the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) announced that, in concert with the New York Attorney General (New York AG), it had entered into a consent order and settlement with an unlicensed mortgage-lending business to resolve allegations that the business illegally made predatory, subprime loans in…
On January 9, 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it had filed a complaint against a constellation of companies for allegedly requesting credit reports without a permissible purpose in order to deceptively market sham student-loan debt relief services to consumers, in violation of the Consumer Financial Protection Act…
On December 11, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced it had reached a settlement with the remaining Defendants in an enforcement action against multiple related companies and their controllers involved in an alleged phantom debt scheme in which the Defendants pressured consumers into paying non-existent debts by threatening legal action…