Tag: Consumer Protection

The Federal Trade Commission charged the operators of two similar student loan debt relief schemes, Manhattan Beach Ventures and Student Advocates Team, and a financing company that assisted them, Equitable Acceptance Corporation, with bilking millions of dollars from consumers.

In May 2021, the FTC sent payments totaling more than $273,500 to consumers who lost money to the student loan debt relief scheme.

The Federal Trade Commission is sending full refunds totaling more than $11 million to consumers who lost money to a bogus credit card interest rate reduction scheme operated by E.M. Systems & Services.

The FTC and the State of Florida alleged that the company’s owners, Steven D. Short and Karissa L. Dyar, used a variety of phony business names with associated websites, cold-called consumers with credit card debt and falsely promised to save them thousands of dollars by reducing their credit card interest rates. The FTC says that the defendants charged an up-front fee between $695 and $1,495, and falsely promised to provide refunds to consumers if they failed to reduce the interest rates.

In April 2021, the FTC used funds from this case to provide $11 million in redress to consumers harmed by the E.M. Systems and Services scam.