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Ethan’s practice focuses on financial services litigation and compliance counseling, as well as digital assets and blockchain technology. With a long track record of successful litigation results across the U.S., both bank and non-bank clients rely on him for comprehensive advice throughout their business cycle.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released its Household Debt and Credit Report this month.  The report, which uses anonymous credit data to generate a nationally representative sample, found that consumers’ overall indebtedness increased $2 billion to $11.9 trillion in the second quarter of 2015.

This number was aided by the increased number of

The FTC announced the federal and state regulators attending its second “Debt Collection Dialogue” in Dallas will be answering questions from industry members and others who attend the event, including questions about how regulatory enforcement actions are investigated and pursued.

Questions for the FTC and panelists may be submitted by email to questions-debtcollectiondialogue-dallas@ftc.gov,

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sent a questionnaire with almost 60 questions to randomly selected debt collectors and service providers as part of its potential rulemaking regarding debt collection, a process that began almost two years ago.   

The CFPB received 23,000 comments in response to its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) for debt collectors,

Over the past two weeks, two separate federal district courts in New York held that having a consumer’s account number visible on the outside of an envelope containing letters from debt collection agencies does not, by itself, violate the FDCPA.  In these cases, both Judge Colleen McMahon and Judge John Curtin, of the Southern

District Judge William J. Nealon of the Middle District of Pennsylvania issued two recent decisions holding that both a Quick Response (“QR”) code and a bar code appearing through the glassine window of an envelope containing a collection letter violate section 1692f(8) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, which prohibits “using any language or

On July 23, the full Senate Committee on Appropriations approved 12 appropriations measures, including provisions to increase oversight of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by bringing its funding under the annual Congressional appropriations process and to change the CFPB’s leadership structure to a five-member commission.  Our discussion of the Subcommittee’s work leading to this

On July 22, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government approved a spending bill for the 2016 fiscal year that would change the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) leadership structure by replacing the CFPB director with a five-member commission.   

The bill also would bring funding for the CFPB’s budget under the annual

On July 20, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a group of plaintiffs who sued Neiman Marcus over the theft of their credit card information in a data security breach had standing to sue for fraudulent charges, as well as fraud-prevention expenses and credit monitoring. The appellate court reversed a prior decision from

On July 13, the American Bankers Association, the Consumer Bankers Association, and The Financial Services Roundtable submitted a comment letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in response to the CFPB’s March 10, 2015 Consumer Arbitration Study.

This Arbitration Study has been widely viewed as potentially laying the groundwork for the abolition of mandatory

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) released a new guidance entitled “Start with Security,” intended to assist businesses in improving their data security practices. Stemming from “basic, fundamental security missteps” identified by the FTC through the more than fifty FTC data security enforcement actions, this suggested guidance provides valuable insight into the issues of concern to