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Every year the FTC brings hundreds of cases against individuals and companies for violating consumer protection and competition laws that the agency enforces. These cases can involve fraud, scams, identity theft, false advertising, privacy violations, anti-competitive behavior and more. The Legal Library has detailed information about cases we have brought in federal court or through our internal administrative process, called an adjudicative proceeding.
In November 2020, at the FTC’s request, a federal court in Ohio issued a temporary restraining order against 25 counterfeit websites that allegedly have been playing on consumers’ COVID-19 pandemic fears to trick them into paying for Clorox and Lysol products that the defendants never deliver.
In May 2021, The FTC announced a law enforcement action to halt deceptive health and efficacy claims in the growing market for cannabidiol (CBD) products. In the action—the first since the Commission announced a crackdown on such false claims last December—Scottsdale, Arizona-based Kushly Industries LLC (Kushly) and the company’s sole officer Cody Alt agreed not to make false or unsupported claims or falsely claim that scientific evidence exists to back them up. They also paid the FTC more than $30,000 in consumer redress.
To settle FTC charges that its actions violated the antitrust laws, the Board of Dental Examiners of Alabama agreed to stop requiring on-site supervision by licensed dentists of alignment scans of prospective patients’ mouths seeking to address misaligned teeth or gaps between teeth. According to the complaint, the board amended a rule to prohibit dental hygienists and other non-dentist practitioners from performing scans inside a patient’s mouth without on-site dentist supervision. The complaint alleges that the Board unreasonably excluded from competition providers of teledentistry-based teeth alignment products and services, and that it did this without adequate active supervision from neutral state officials, in violation of the FTC Act.
At the Federal Trade Commission’s request, a federal court has temporarily halted and frozen the assets of Grand Teton Professionals, an alleged credit repair scheme that charged illegal upfront fees and falsely claimed to repair consumers’ credit. The company and other defendants are charged with violating the FTC Act and several provisions of the Credit Repair Organizations Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the Consumer Review Fairness Act, the Truth in Lending Act, and the Electronic Funds Transfer Act.
On October 21, 2019, the FTC announced it had halted the deceptive online marketing tactics of cosmetics firm Sunday Riley Modern Skincare, LLC and its CEO. Under the order settling the FTC’s complaint the defendants were banned from misleading consumers by posting fake reviews of the company’s products on a major retailer’s website, at the CEO’s direction, and by failing to disclose that the reviewers were company employees. The FTC announced approval of the final order in November 2020.