Photo of Stephen C. Piepgrass

Stephen leads the firm’s Regulatory Investigations, Strategy + Enforcement (RISE) Practice Group. He focuses his practice on enforcement actions, investigations, and litigation. Stephen primarily represents clients engaging with, or being investigated by, state attorneys general and other state or local governmental enforcement bodies, including the CFPB and FTC, as well as clients involved with litigation, with a particular focus on heavily regulated industries. He also has experience advising clients on data and privacy issues, including handling complex investigations into data incidents by state attorneys general other state and federal regulators. Additionally, Stephen provides strategic counsel to Troutman Pepper’s Strategies clients who need assistance with public policy, advocacy, and government relations strategies.

President Donald Trump announced this morning that he plans to nominate Kathy Kraninger, associate director of the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”), to become the new director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”), replacing Mick Mulvaney.

The announcement came as a surprise to many because Kraninger’s name was not among those that had

On May 14, the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (“PAPSA”), a federal law that prohibited most states from allowing sports-related gambling.  The ruling now clears the way for any state to legalize gambling on sports.

PAPSA made it “unlawful” for a state to “authorize” any gambling operation based on

Even though both parties agreed the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring suit under the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (“FACTA”), the Seventh Circuit recently reversed the district court’s dismissal for lack of standing, and instead ordered the district court to remand the case to state court.

The FACTA putative class action, originally filed in

In a still-incomplete provocative piece whose conclusions were presented at this year’s American Economic Association (“AEA”) meeting in Philadelphia in January 2018 and highlighted by the American Bankruptcy Institute on March 29, 2018, three economists—Gene Amromin, Vice President and Director of Financial Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; Janice C. Eberly

The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act, commonly referred to as the “CLOUD Act,” a last-minute addition to the $1.3 trillion federal spending bill, has been signed into law by President Donald Trump. The Act allots the United States government more access to Americans’ overseas data for law enforcement purposes and helps foreign governments

Psychologists say that adolescents and young adults take more risks than any other age group. Perhaps this is why about one in five (21.2%) college students receiving financial aid to pay for their education have invested these loans in a cryptocurrency, according to a recent survey by The Student Loan Report, a website for student

As newspaper articles, academic studies, and politicians’ speeches have repeated, statistics suggest that a student loan crisis may be building. The share of students graduating with more than $50,000 in student loan debt has more than tripled since 2000, increasing from 5% in 2000 to 17% in 2014. As a result, this group of “large-balance

On June 9, 2017, under the leadership of its former director, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a modified civil investigative demand, or “CID,” containing the following Notification of Purpose: 

The purpose of this investigation is to determine whether a [sic] student-loan servicers or other persons, in connection with

While Washington debates various reforms to the federal government’s student loan framework, and other states adopt borrowers’ bills of rights to the consternation of the United States Department of Education, other proposals for dealing with the student debt crisis have cropped up in legislatures across the country. In recent weeks, two

As of March 23, at least 19 states hold or revoke the state-issued licenses of teachers and/or other professionals if the borrower is in default on their student loans. These jurisdictions span the country, both ideologically and geographically: