Tag: Bureau of Consumer Protection

The Federal Trade Commission is taking action against tax preparation company H&R Block for unfairly deleting consumers’ tax data and requiring them to contact customer service when they downgrade to more affordable online products, and deceptively marketing their products as “free” when they were not free for many consumers. These practices cost consumers time and money.

The Federal Trade Commission has stopped scammers who the agency says facilitated an operation to prey on students seeking debt relief. The agency charges that the defendants pretended to be affiliated with the U.S. Department of Education, used deceptive loan forgiveness promises, and falsely claimed they were offering relief under the “Biden Loan Forgiveness” plan to lure students and collect millions in illegal upfront fees. 

After the FTC filed a complaint seeking to end the deceptive practices, a federal court temporarily halted the operations and froze the assets of Apex Processing Center and its owners.

Under proposed orders settling the FTC’s charges, several defendants in the case—including Express Enrollment LLC, Intercontinental Solutions LLC, Ivan Esquivel, and Robert Kissinger —will be permanently banned from the debt relief industry and will be required to turn over their assets to the FTC. Litigation continues against Marco Manzi, the remaining defendant in the case.

Cerebral, Inc. has agreed to an order that, will restrict how the company can use or disclose sensitive consumer data and require it to provide consumers with a simple way to cancel services to settle FTC charges that the telehealth firm failed to secure and protect sensitive health data.

The FTC has taken action against an alcohol addiction treatment service for allegedly disclosing users’ personal health data to third-party advertising platforms, including Meta and Google, for advertising without consumer consent, after promising to keep such information confidential.

X-Mode Social and its successor Outlogic will be prohibited from sharing or selling any sensitive location data to settle FTC allegations that the company sold precise location data that could be used to track people’s visits to sensitive locations such as medical and reproductive health clinics, places of religious worship and domestic abuse shelters.

As a result of a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit, investment advice company WealthPress has agreed to a proposed court order that would require it to refund more than $1.2 million to consumers and pay a $500,000 civil penalty for deceiving consumers with outlandish and false claims about their services. In April 2023, the FTC announced it was returning $1.2 million to defrauded consumers.