They bought Google ads on your debt collector’s name, then answered the phone as if they were the collector
A federal court has temporarily shut down a credit repair operation the FTC says took nearly $200 million, and the FTC’s complaint describes a mechanism worth understanding, because it will outlive this defendant. The agency alleges Credit Glory and a network of sixteen related entities ran paid search ads aimed at people looking up a debt collector or creditor — so someone searching for the company that was calling them reached these defendants instead, and telemarketers let them believe they were talking to the actual collector. It alleges the operation then charged illegal upfront fees plus recurring charges people hadn’t knowingly agreed to. These are allegations; the FTC says so itself — it files on “reason to believe,” and an Arizona court will decide.
One detail deserves its own sentence. The FTC alleges the ads in some instances specifically targeted military servicemembers owing debts to military-linked creditors like the Army & Air Force Exchange Service and USAA. Somebody decided the people worth targeting were the ones with a government paycheck and a debt they were ashamed of.
Here’s the part that protects you after this case is over. Charging you before the work is done is not a gray area in credit repair — it has been flatly illegal since 1996. The Credit Repair Organizations Act, at 15 U.S.C. §1679b(b), says no credit repair organization may charge or receive money “for the performance of any service which the credit repair organization has agreed to perform for any consumer before such service is fully performed.” The fee request is the test. If money is wanted before results exist, you already have your answer.
The free version of what they were selling
What these outfits sell is disputing items on your credit report — and there’s a piece of that almost nobody uses. Two people in Indiana filed complaints this month making the same argument: Autumn Harroff sued Portfolio Recovery Associates in the Northern District of Indiana and Alexis Worthington sued the same company in the Southern District, each alleging it kept reporting a debt after being told the debt was disputed, without ever noting that it was disputed. Filings, not findings — nobody has been found liable.
Almost everybody knows you can dispute an error with the credit bureaus. Almost nobody knows there’s a second duty, and that it sits on the collector. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, at 15 U.S.C. §1692e(8), makes it a violation to communicate “credit information which is known or which should be known to be false, including the failure to communicate that a disputed debt is disputed.” Staying silent about your dispute is itself the violation. So write to the collector directly, not only the bureau: name the account, say plainly that you dispute it and why, keep a copy with proof of mailing. That letter costs a stamp. It is the thing the $200 million was allegedly charged for.
Two honest limits. Individual FDCPA statutory damages are capped at $1,000 on top of actual damages — a rights-and-record tool, not a payday. And §1692k(a)(3) lets a court award fees against you if it finds you sued in bad faith to harass. Dispute what you genuinely dispute.
Money you might actually be owed — and one you’re not
The FTC posted who it sent refund checks to in July, per Top Class Actions. Worth two minutes, because FTC refunds arrive unannounced and a real one never asks you for a fee or your bank login to release it.
Now the one you are not owed. A court threw out a class action against Mercedes-Benz over an alleged panoramic sunroof defect, Top Class Actions reports. Nothing about the vehicles changed that day — what changed is that a case some people had mentally banked as money coming stopped existing. A filed class action is an accusation, not a fund.
The ones to warn someone about
Two class actions have been filed against Frontier Airlines over a data breach, alleging it failed to protect customer and employee information. Unproven. But if a breach letter reaches you this month, the letter is not the action: freeze your credit at all three bureaus. It’s free, about ten minutes, and it is the only step that stops a new account in your name. Credit monitoring, which is what these letters offer, tells you afterwards.
There’s also an investigation into whether Comenity Capital Bank made prerecorded calls — relevant if you carry a store card, since Comenity is behind a great many of them. And the New York Attorney General is warning about a gold bar scam aimed at seniors. If an older person you love has been told to move savings into gold for safekeeping, that is the call to make tonight.
Numbers that mean the opposite of what they look like
I’ve been reading what these companies tell their investors, because that’s where the plain version lives. Synchrony’s latest quarterly filing shows late fees down, and it does not mean what you’d assume. Consumer Portfolio Services told the SEC about its car loan extensions — an extension that feels like help is also what keeps an account out of the delinquency column. And Sallie Mae described a “refinance” that, read carefully, looks a great deal like a default being repackaged.
The door most people don’t know they have
In the seven days to today, at least 85 federal suits were filed against Equifax Information Services, at least 24 against Experian and at least 23 against Trans Union. I say “at least” and mean it twice over: that index covers federal courts only, and these claims can be brought in state court too, which we don’t monitor — and federal indexing lags a week or two, so recent days are undercounted. The real number is higher and I can’t tell you by how much. What the floor already tells you: if you disputed an error and got a form letter back, you are not an unlucky exception. One of this week’s, Wang v. Transworld Systems, is on the site if you want to see one from the inside.
If one of these is happening to you right now
These are evergreen guides rather than news, so they stay out of the daily briefing by design — if you’re only on that list, you have never seen them.
If you’re falling behind on Chapter 13 payments, the window before dismissal is shorter than most people think. If a parent died in a nursing home and someone says you owe the bill, read that before paying a cent, because usually you don’t. If you were told your SAVE forbearance months still count toward forgiveness, check — for many borrowers they don’t. And if you have a private student loan from a school that defrauded you, the Holder Rule reaches further than people assume.
Before you go
This is the broad daily sweep. If you want the fuller version, one topic at a time with the reasoning worked through, that’s the GOOD Weekday Briefing, and it’s free.
And if you know somebody who has been googling the collector that keeps calling them, forward this. That is precisely the search the FTC says was being bought.
— Steve