Monitoring the financial services industry to help companies navigate through regulatory compliance, enforcement, and litigation issues
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster recently announced a settlement with a business alleged to have improperly marketed limited-time extended warranty programs for vehicles. The AG stated that the settlement “highlights [his office’s] efforts to clean up the auto service contract industry in Missouri and protect consumers from future deceptive sales practices.”
According to the AG,…
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continued “Operation Steer Clear” – a crackdown on deceptive advertising by automobile dealers – with a tenth settlement with a dealer accused of misrepresenting the terms of available consumer leases.
Courtesy Auto Group, Inc., a Massachusetts auto dealer, agreed to a proposed settlement with the FTC under which…
As we have mentioned in previous posts, Operation Choke Point is a federal Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, created in 2009, including law enforcement and regulators from the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. To attack financial fraud, the Task Force has been issuing subpoenas to banks for financial…
This month, the Federal Trade Commission charged an Arkansas auto dealer, Abernathy Motor Company, and its two principals, with failing to display a “Buyers Guide” on used vehicles offered for sale, as required by the FTC’s Used Car Rule. Before being charged, the FTC had visited the dealer in December 2012 and identified issues of…
In its annual FDCPA report to Congress released on March 20, 2014, the CFPB stated that the industry continues to be plagued by aggressive collection tactics and inaccurate record-keeping. According to the Bureau, since it began receiving consumer complaints about the industry in July, it has received more than 30,000 complaints concerning debt collection practices.…
On March 11, 2014, the Seventh Circuit ruled that settlement letters sent to debtors concerning the settlement of time-barred debt were misleading even though the letters did not threaten litigation.
The plaintiffs were both Illinois residents with outstanding debt that was subject to the state’s four-year statutes of limitations, and the collection firms named in…
As a part of its plans to modernize regulation of the debt collection industry, the CFPB announced on February 26, 2014, that it will begin the process of soliciting consumer input to “learn about their experiences interacting with the debt collection industry” – specifically their most recent contact with debt collectors and whether they recognized…
The State Attorneys General from 30 states and the District of Columbia submitted a comment letter to the CFPB on February 28, 2014, urging the CFPB to “adopt well-tailored, comprehensive, and balanced rules” that will apply to “all persons engaged in the collection of consumer debts” which would presumably include both first and third-party collectors.…
The ACA issued its response to the CFPB’s Announced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. In its comment letter, the ACA suggested a number of considerations that it believes should guide CFPB’s development of new regulations designed to modernize the FDCPA:
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A recent comment letter from the American Bankers Association, Consumer Bankers Association and the Financial Services Roundtable to the CFPB urged the Bureau to prioritize third-party agencies in its FDCPA rulemakings.
Chief among the group’s concerns is maintaining “the distinction between first and third-party collections recognized by the FDCPA.” The signatories “strongly oppose placing FDCPA-like…
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