Blog Posts Tagged with Debt

The FTC and its law enforcement partners are waging the war against illegal telemarketing on many fronts. An amended complaint in a pending case filed by the FTC and the Ohio Attorney General seeks to hold an additional adversary responsible for violations of the law: Globex Telecom, a VoIP service provider that allegedly played a key role in subjecting consumers to a barrage of illegal calls for a bogus credit card interest rate reduction scheme.

The first rule of credit repair is that no credit repair company can remove accurate and timely negative information from someone’s credit report. For credit repair companies that would claim otherwise, there’s CROA – the Credit Repair Organizations Act. It makes it illegal for credit repair companies to lie about what they can do to clear up a clouded credit report, or charge upfront fees before they do the job they promised to do.

Military families face all the consumer protection issues other Americans face – and then some. Frequent moves and deployments can pose additional financial challenges for servicemembers. And some of these concerns continue even after they’ve settled into civilian life.

So you’ve received a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) from the Federal Trade Commission related to a consumer protection matter. Now what? We appreciate that it can be daunting for any company – especially a small business – and we want to be as transparent as possible about the process.

Everyone knows that The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas. But did you know that The AG’s team is a partner’s dream, deep in the heart of Texas?

That’s the tune we’re humming to honor our colleagues at the Consumer Protection Division of the Office of the Texas Attorney General – recipients of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection’s Partner Award. The Award recognizes their extraordinary contribution to our shared mission to fight fraud and deception in the marketplace.

First came the companies claiming they could reduce consumers’ credit card debt. Next were the outfits saying they could renegotiate mortgages or save homes from foreclosure. Now that people are struggling with the trillion-dollar burden of student loan debt, some marketers are making dramatic promises about reduced payments and loan forgiveness – representations the FTC alleges are false or misleading.

For swimmers struggling to stay afloat, imagine this good news/bad news scenario. The good news: Someone throws a life preserver in your direction. The bad news: It’s made of concrete. According to an FTC lawsuit, that’s a rough analogy to the services that Damian Kutzner, Brookstone Law, Advantis Law, attorney Vito Torchia, Jr., and others offered to consumers caught in the undertow of foreclosure.

The FTC just posted a new list and you’ll want to make sure you don’t land on it.

It’s a list of hundreds of companies and individuals banned from the debt relief business.

A complaint filed by the FTC and the Illinois Attorney General against an operation that used names like Stark Law, Stark Recovery, and Capital Harris Miller & Associates alleges a veritable smorgasbord of debt collection violations. But the Stark Law lawsuit includes an additional allegation that should send a stark warning to those in the debt buying business.