The Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection has issued an alert warning consumers about a growing scam in which fraudsters create near-perfect clones of legitimate car dealership websites, sometimes using AI, to trick buyers into paying upfront for vehicles that don’t exist. Victims show up at the real dealership only to find no record of their order, their payment, or their car.
On July 20, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed Senate Bill 992 (the Bill) into law, with an effective date of October 19, 2026. The amendments modernize the Telemarketer Registration Act (the Act) for the first time in almost three decades to address today’s technology, including robocalls, text messages, ringless voicemails, and AI-generated messaging and impose new compliance obligations on businesses that contact Pennsylvania consumers by phone or text. Significant changes are discussed below.
In this crossover edition of Moving the Metal: The Auto Finance Podcast and The Consumer Finance Podcast, hosts Brooke Conkle, Chris Capurso, and Chris Willis break down the FTC’s policy statement abandoning disparate impact enforcement under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Section 5 of the FTC Act. The group traces the reversal to two key drivers — a reassessment of the FTC’s statutory authority and President Trump’s executive order directing agencies to deprioritize disparate impact liability — while placing the move in the broader context of similar rollbacks at the CFPB and federal banking regulators. They also examine what remaining exposure looks like at the state level, particularly in New York and New Jersey, and close with a clear message for compliance officers: fair lending is far from dead, the current federal retreat is best understood as a vacation rather than a permanent reprieve, and paying close attention to regulatory signals now can be a meaningful competitive advantage down the road.
In this crossover edition of Moving the Metal: The Auto Finance Podcast and The Consumer Finance Podcast, hosts Brooke Conkle, Chris Capurso, and Chris Willis break down the FTC’s policy statement abandoning disparate impact enforcement under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Section 5 of the FTC Act. The group traces the reversal to two key drivers — a reassessment of the FTC’s statutory authority and President Trump’s executive order directing agencies to deprioritize disparate impact liability — while placing the move in the broader context of similar rollbacks at the CFPB and federal banking regulators. They also examine what remaining exposure looks like at the state level, particularly in New York and New Jersey, and close with a clear message for compliance officers: fair lending is far from dead, the current federal retreat is best understood as a vacation rather than a permanent reprieve, and paying close attention to regulatory signals now can be a meaningful competitive advantage down the road.
On August 26, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced updated fees for telemarketers to access phone numbers listed on the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry for Fiscal Year 2027, which begins October 1, 2026.
All telemarketers calling consumers in the U.S. are required to download and cross-reference numbers listed on the National DNC
In this episode of Moving the Metal, hosts Brooke Conkle and Chris Capurso break down the FTC’s landmark policy statement officially abandoning disparate impact enforcement and what it means for dealers and auto finance companies. They cover the agency’s two core justifications — statutory authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act and ECOA, and President Trump’s executive order on meritocracy — and explain why, despite the federal reprieve, companies should not treat this as a green light to abandon fair lending compliance programs altogether. From the compliance side, Chris walks through the careful recalibration businesses should consider, while Brooke flags that pending litigation and active state-level efforts to codify disparate impact liability mean the risk landscape is far from clear. The episode closes with a preview of Part 2, where the hosts will be joined by Chris Willis to dig deeper into the history and future of fair lending law.
More than two years after filing suit, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong have secured a $4 million settlement with Manchester, Connecticut auto dealer Chase Nissan LLC, doing business as Manchester City Nissan, along with its owners and managers, resolving allegations of widespread deceptive fee practices targeting consumers in the car-buying process.
In this crossover episode of The Consumer Finance Podcast and Moving the Metal, Jason Cover is joined by colleagues Brooke Conkle and Chris Capurso from Troutman Pepper Locke’s Consumer Financial Services practice to tackle a topic that has been notably absent from the point-of-sale finance series until now — auto finance. As the largest point-of-sale purchase most consumers will ever make, auto finance comes with a distinct set of structural, regulatory, and litigation risks that set it apart from other point-of-sale products like home improvement or medical financing. The conversation begins with the structural mechanics of retail installment sales contracts, explaining why auto finance is dominated by dealer-originated paper assigned to finance companies rather than direct lending, and what that means for compliance and liability. Chris walks through the complexities of vehicle titling and lien perfection across a 50-state patchwork of DMV laws — including the added wrinkles that arise in the refinance context — while Brooke unpacks the litigation risks that follow when those processes go wrong, from repossession claims and bankruptcy lien avoidance to class actions rooted in the FTC Holder Rule. The episode also covers evergreen underwriting and origination risks including ECOA adverse action obligations, yo-yo financing claims, and add-on product exposure, as well as the FTC’s recent price advertising guidance and how state attorneys general are stepping into the enforcement void left by federal regulators. The episode closes with practical advice for point-of-sale finance companies considering entering the auto space.
In this episode of FCRA Focus, host Dave Gettings is joined by Partners Brooke Conkle and Ethan Ostroff to break down the Tenth Circuit’s landmark decision in Ward v. National Credit Systems, Inc., which reversed a $500,000 jury verdict and confirmed that reported information is only actionably inaccurate under Section 1681s-2(b) of the FCRA if it is “objectively and readily verifiable” as inaccurate. The team discusses how Ward fits into a growing circuit court consensus, what it means for furnishers defending identity theft claims at summary judgment, and why consumers will need to bring more than just an FTC identity theft report to support their disputes going forward.
On August 7, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a policy statement announcing that it will no longer pursue claims based on disparate impact or “unfair discrimination” theories under any statute it enforces. The FTC’s action is the latest in a series of coordinated federal agency moves away from disparate impact enforcement. As we previously reported here, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed to repeal its Fair Housing Act disparate impact regulations in January 2026, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalized its rewrite of Subpart A of Regulation B under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) in April 2026, eliminating the disparate impact “effects test” from ECOA enforcement and reframing ECOA as an intent-only statute (see here). Together with the FTC’s action, these developments signal a sweeping realignment of federal fair lending and consumer protection enforcement away from outcome-based theories and toward intentional discrimination as the operative standard.