Dad Joke
What’s the fastest liquid on the planet?
Milk. It’s pasteurized before you even see it.
Now Let’s Make Your Money Smile
Somebody had to let that scam charge your card. On Thursday the FTC fined them $4.85 million
Here’s a thing most people never think about, and it changes what you do when it happens to you.
When a scam takes money off your credit card, the money doesn’t travel straight from you to some anonymous crook overseas. It can’t. To charge a Visa or a Mastercard, you need a payment processor — a real, regulated, named company that agrees to run your transactions. Every fake “your computer is infected” popup that ever got paid, got paid because a company in the middle opened an account for the people behind it.
On Thursday the FTC went after one of those middlemen. Global processor Nuvei agreed to pay $4.85 million and to actually screen who it does business with, to settle charges that it opened and kept accounts for merchants it “knew or should have known” were running deceptions.
The number that stopped me: the FTC alleges Nuvei processed more than $30 million in consumer payments for a single offshore tech support scam called Reimage — from 2017 to 2023. Six years. The complaint also says it took on merchants selling business opportunities with baseless earnings claims, and merchants impersonating government tax authorities. These are allegations in a complaint and a settlement, not a court finding of guilt.
So why does this matter to you and not just to lawyers? Because it tells you where the leverage is. If your father paid $299 to somebody who called about his computer, the instinct is to feel foolish and let it go — the crook is gone, what’s the point. But the crook was never the only party. There is a processor, and a bank, and a card network, and every one of them has rules about this and a federal agency currently paying attention. That is why you dispute the charge with your card issuer instead of writing it off. You are not chasing the scammer. You are telling the one company in the chain that has an address and a regulator.
Forward this to whoever in your family answers the phone to unknown numbers. If somebody ever paid a “tech support” charge and never disputed it because they assumed the money was gone — it went through a processor like this one, and that is exactly the charge that gets reversed when you actually call the card company.
The FTC is mailing out money right now, and people are throwing it away
This is the part that always gets me. When the FTC wins one of these cases, it sends the money back — actual paper checks and PayPal payments to actual people. Refunds went out in August alone for AT&T data throttling, Grubhub, Amazon Flex drivers, Helping America Group and Blueprint to Wealth.
You don’t apply for most of these. If you were in the case, they find you. Which is precisely the problem: an unexpected check arrives from a company you half-remember, it looks exactly like every sweepstakes scam you’ve been warned about, and into the bin it goes.
Two things worth knowing. FTC refund checks usually expire — commonly 90 days — and after that you are asking for a reissue you may not get. And the FTC never asks you to pay a fee or hand over your bank details to claim one. If someone does ask, that is the scam, and the real refund page above is how you check.
Go look at that list. The FTC names the cases and the administrator handling each one on its own refund page — so if one of those names is a company you actually dealt with, that is the envelope you do not want to bin.
Six million bottles of household cleaner, recalled Friday
Quick one, and it is the kind of thing that pays for itself.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Friday that Clorox Puerto Rico is recalling about 6 million bottles of scented Mistolin and Lestoil multi-purpose cleaners over the risk of bacteria in the product. Six million is not a niche batch — that is a bottle under a lot of kitchen sinks.
Here is the money part people skip. A recall is a refund. You are entitled to a remedy from the company, and for a consumable like this that normally means your money back, usually without the receipt. Most people read a recall headline, think “I should check that sometime,” and never do, which means the manufacturer keeps money that was supposed to come back to you.
Two minutes: look under the sink, check the full CPSC recall list while you’re at it, and if you have a bottle, stop using it and file for the refund.
What I published
A Medical Bill Went to Collections and Nobody Warned Me. Here’s What to Do Right Now.
Can Debt Collectors Take VA Disability? What I Tell Veterans When the Truck Dies
The Car Loan Interest Deduction Is Real — But Dealers Are Already Using It to Sell You More Car
For the deeper dives — company reviews, full case breakdowns, the stuff that needs more than a paragraph — that’s what the Weekday Briefing is for. This one’s the quick version, every day. If today’s issue was useful, pass it along.
Nothing here is legal advice, and I’m not your lawyer or your financial advisor. These are filings and allegations, not findings — read “alleges” as exactly that. Talk to someone qualified before you act on anything specific to your situation.
Something I want you to take out of today. Every story up there has a company in the middle of it — a processor, a card issuer, an agency with a refund list. When you are the one who got taken, it feels like you against a ghost, and ghosts can’t be argued with. But there is almost always somebody real in that chain with a name, a rulebook and a phone number. Thirty years of this and the pattern holds: the money comes back to the people who make one uncomfortable phone call, not to the people who were cleverest about it. Make the call. I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Steve
Bonus Section
A few places I actually use, and what I get out of telling you. Each one shows a plain link and my referral link. If you use mine, the company may hand us both a small bonus. The plain link goes to exactly the same place — it just pays me nothing, and you nothing. Use whichever you like; genuinely, it’s your call.
I’ve also listed places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference.
Cash that actually earns something
Betterment — their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account. (my referral link)
Robinhood’s cash sweep pays competitively too. The good rate sits behind their paid Gold tier — I pay for it myself — so on a small balance the subscription can eat the gain. It’s under Investing below. Do the arithmetic before you subscribe.
And one where nobody pays anybody: TreasuryDirect is the government’s own site. You buy Treasury bills straight from the Treasury with no broker in the middle — $100 minimum, in $100 increments, terms from four weeks out to a year. There is no app, no bonus and no referral link in existence for it. I mention it because for money you know you won’t touch for a few months, it’s usually the honest number the others have to beat.
Saving without having to think about it
Acorns — rounds up your spare change and invests it automatically. I pay for it, and the reason is simple: it saves money I’d otherwise spend without noticing. (my referral link)
And the version that costs nobody anything, me included: a standing transfer out of checking on payday, at the bank you already have. Acorns works because it moves the money before you notice it; a transfer you set once and forget does the same thing. If you’d rather not open another account, do that instead — I’d genuinely rather you saved something than used my link.
Investing
Robinhood — the platform I run my own experiment on. Uninvested cash is swept to FDIC-insured program banks, so it doubles as a cash account. The competitive rate requires their paid Gold subscription, which I pay for myself — worth it at my balance, but do the arithmetic on yours. And note Robinhood doesn’t pay that interest itself; the program banks do. (my referral link)
And three I recommend on merit, where I get nothing at all: Vanguard for low-cost index funds, Schwab for a full-service brokerage, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades.
Rates and terms move, and each of these has its own conditions. Go look at today’s numbers before you move a dollar.
A free conversation about your situation
Damon Day is an independent debt coach, and my co-host on Get Out of Debt Guy — you can also hear us on Spotify. I want you to know that before you decide anything. I receive no payment for this referral.
The consultation is free. The only time money changes hands is if you decide you want to hire him as a consultant. Go to DamonDay.com and schedule — he doesn’t cold-call anybody, and neither do I.
Or ask me, anonymously
Ask Steve — free, private, and I’m not selling anything. No account, no email, no sales pitch at the end of it.