Legal Library: Cases and Proceedings

Dun & Bradstreet agreed to a $5.7 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations the firm violated a 2022 order.

The FTC is taking action against the operator of the Sendit anonymous messaging app for unlawfully collecting personal data from children, misleading users by sending messages from fake “people,” and tricking consumers into purchasing paid subscriptions by falsely promising to reveal the senders of anonymous messages.

The Federal Trade Commission took action to resolve antitrust concerns related to Omnicom Group Inc.’s $13.5 billion acquisition of The Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (IPG).

The FTC accepted a proposed consent order that will prevent potential anticompetitive coordination by Omnicom, a global advertising agency that facilitates media buying by representing advertisers in negotiations with media publishers over conditions such as pricing, ad placement, and sponsorships, as well as helping execute advertisers’ ad campaigns.

On September 26, 2025, the FTC approved a final order in this matter which further clarifies the order’s scope and imposes a compliance monitor.

The Federal Trade Commission is taking action against Amazon.com, Inc. for its years-long effort to enroll consumers into its Prime program without their consent while knowingly making it difficult for consumers to cancel their subscriptions to Prime.

In a complaint filed today, the FTC charges that Amazon has knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime. Specifically, Amazon used manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as “dark patterns” to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions.

Amazon also knowingly complicated the cancellation process for Prime subscribers who sought to end their membership. The primary purpose of its Prime cancellation process was not to enable subscribers to cancel, but to stop them. Amazon leadership slowed or rejected changes that would’ve made it easier for users to cancel Prime because those changes adversely affected Amazon’s bottom line. 

CVS agreed to settle allegations that its acquisition of Revco would substantially reduce competition for the retail sale of pharmacy services to health insurance companies and other third-party payers in Virginia and in the Binghamton, New York metropolitan area. The consent order requires the divestiture of 114 Revco stores in Virginia and 6 pharmacy counters in Binghamton.

In March, 1998, CVS Corporation agreed to pay a $600,000 civil penalty to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the company violated a 1997 consent order and asset maintenance agreement it signed with the agency to settle charges stemming from CVS's 1997 acquisition of Revco D.S., Inc.

The FTC and seven states sued Ticketmaster and Live Nation alleging they deceived artists and consumers by engaging in bait-and-switch pricing through advertising lower prices for tickets than what consumers must pay to purchase tickets; deceptively claimed to impose strict limits on the number of tickets that consumers could purchase for an event, even though ticket brokers routinely and substantially exceeded those limits; and sold millions of tickets, often at much higher cost to consumers, on its resale platform that those brokers obtained in excess of artists’ ticket limits.

At the FTC’s request, a federal court has temporarily halted the operation of a sprawling business opportunity scheme that has taken in millions of dollars from consumers with bogus promises of huge returns. The scheme has operated since at least 2018 under several names, including “Blueprint to Wealth,” according to the FTC’s complaint. Three individuals and a company owned by one of them -- Business Revolution Group -- are charged in the complaint with operating the scheme. The defendants in the case agreed to settlements with the FTC that include monetary judgments, industry bans, and prohibitions on certain conduct. 

In September 2025, the FTC announced it was returning $666,631 to consumers defrauded by a sprawling business opportunity scheme.

In September 2025, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Chegg Inc. will be required to pay $7.5 million to settle FTC allegations that the education technology provider made it extremely difficult for consumers to cancel recurring subscriptions while also failing to honor consumers’ cancellation requests. 

In September 2025, the FTC announced that Whaleco, Inc., which operates the online marketplace Temu, will pay $2 million to resolve Federal Trade Commission allegations that it violated the INFORM Consumers Act of 2023, by failing to provide consumers with required information and tools to help them avoid and report stolen, counterfeit, or unsafe goods while shopping online.

The FTC and the state of Utah announced a settlement with the operators of Pornhub and other pornography-streaming sites over charges they deceived users by doing little to block tens of thousands of videos and photos featuring child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and nonconsensual material (NCM) despite claiming that this content was “strictly prohibited.”