Legal Library: Cases and Proceedings

The defendants behind a New York-based debt collection scheme will be permanently banned from the debt collection industry under a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and the New York Attorney General, who alleged that the defendants bilked consumers out of millions of dollars by brokering and collecting on fake debts that people did not owe. In October, 2021 the FTC returned $772,512 to consumers who were targeted by the defendants.

The operators of the MoviePass subscription service have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations they took steps to block subscribers from using the service as advertised, while also failing to secure subscribers’ personal data.The operators of the MoviePass subscription service have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission allegations they took steps to block subscribers from using the service as advertised, while also failing to secure subscribers’ personal data.

Announced in June 2019 as part of a crackdown on illegal robocalls against operations around the country responsible for more than one billion calls, thisFTC complaint against five corporate and four individual defendants<, alleges that since at least 2017 the defendants have used a combination of illegal telemarketing robocalls, live telephone calls, text messaging, internet ads, emails, social media, and live events to market and sell consumers fraudulent money-making opportunities. The complaint charges the defendants, who operate from California, Colorado, New York, and Tennessee, with violating the FTC Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), or both, by making deceptive earnings claims through robocalls and other marketing techniques. In September 2021, The Federal Trade Commission sent checks totaling more than $1 million to consumers who were harmed by the company.

The owner and operator of Inmate Magazine Service, a company that scammed prisoners and their families by charging them for magazine subscriptions that either showed up late or not at all, will be permanently banned from selling or marketing magazine subscriptions.

Under the terms of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission and the Florida Office of Attorney General, Roy Snowden, who owned and operated a number of businesses that operated as Inmate Magazine Service, will also be required to surrender the contents of multiple bank accounts.

The FTC and Florida’s complaint against Snowden and his companies alleged that they marketed magazine subscriptions to consumers serving prison sentences, as well as their families, offering to send the magazines to the prisoners while they were incarcerated and promising the magazines would arrive within 120 days.

In many cases, the magazines never arrived or were delivered far later than promised, with no notification to the consumers about delayed shipment or the chance to cancel their orders as required by the FTC’s Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise Rule. The complaint also alleged that consumers were almost never able to contact the company to request refunds or status updates on orders.

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.