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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 Trade Commission is proactively encouraging start-ups to take cybersecurity seriously and include consumer data safeguards early in the innovation process.  At the FTC’s Start with Security conference in San Francisco on September 9, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez called on innovators to instill a “culture of security” early in the product development lifecycle.

In

The FTC announced it has changed the location and has re-opened registration for its second “Debt Collection Dialogue” in Dallas.  The September 29 event is now going to take place at Southern Methodist University’s Dedman School of Law.  Pre-registration, which originally closed on August 13, was re-opened for this larger event.

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In response to the CFPB’s request for information (RFI) regarding “best practices” for normalizing the data in the Consumer Complaint Database, issued on June 30, 2015, the American Bankers Association (ABA) submitted a comment letter that argues any efforts made by the CFPB to “normalize” data in its consumer complaints database – that is,

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs has the authority to regulate law firms’ conduct related to purchasing and collecting consumer debt.

In Eric M. Berman, P.C., et al. v. City of New York, et al., the Second Circuit vacated a 2009 district court ruling

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