In order to assist the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with its statutory obligation to report annually to Congress concerning the federal government’s efforts to implement the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Federal Trade Commission submitted a summary of its own enforcement activities during 2014.
The FTC’s summary highlights not only the “aggressive law enforcement
On February 12, Representative Steve Stivers (R-Ohio) reintroduced bi-partisan legislation that would require the Senate to confirm an independent inspector general for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, arguing it would provide greater oversight.
The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection-Inspector General Act of 2015 (H.R. 957) is co-sponsored by Tim Walz (D-Minn.), Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.), and
On February 11, a federal court in Texas dismissed a putative Fair Credit Reporting Act class action filed by a former patient of health services provider St. Joseph Services Corp. who alleged that the defendant’s failure to guard against a personal data breach violated the FCRA. After reviewing the state of the law regarding standing
In a recent decision applying established Telephone Consumer Protection Act law to the developing text application market, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California found in Glauser v. GroupMe, Inc. that group texts did not violate the TCPA because they required human intervention. Specifically, the court found that the “welcome texts” –
On February 11, a group of Florida retainers, including a jewelry store and hobby shop, filed an appeal before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals that, in part, challenges Florida’s law prohibiting merchants from charging “swipe fees” on credit card sales. According to the retailers, the state law is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment
On February 12, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced that it had filed a complaint against one mortgage company, All Financial Services, and had entered consent orders against two others, Flagship Financial Group and American Preferred Lending, based on claims that the companies had deceptively implied that they were affiliated with the United States government.
On February 11, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced that payday lender Advance America Cash Advance Centers Inc. will pay $10 million to settle claims that it hid allegedly sky-high interest rates from consumers in violation of state law.
In a lawsuit against Advance America, Kane alleged that the company offered a loan product it
On February 10, the Department of Justice and the North Carolina Attorney General filed a consent decree to settle claims that a Charlotte-area “buy here pay here” dealer engaged in intentionally discriminatory “reverse redlining” practices. The regulators alleged that the defendants specifically targeted African-American customers and imposed onerous credit terms upon them without regard to
Since its creation in 2009, the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (“HECM”) reverse mortgage program created by the Federal Housing Authority has helped numerous senior citizens stay in their homes by allowing them to convert the equity in their home into useable funds instead of having to sell their homes to supplement their retirement income or
Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Continental Finance Company LLC, a credit card lender, to refund an estimated $2.7 million to approximately 98,000 consumers. The CFPB found that the company’s subprime credit cards misrepresented certain fees and hit consumers with illegal charges. The order also requires the company to pay a civil penalty