Tag: Consumer Protection

In May 2022, the FTC took action against R360 LLC and its owner, Steven Doumar, for deceiving people seeking help for addiction about the evaluation and selection criteria for the treatment centers in their network. The case is the FTC’s first under the Opioid Addiction Recovery Fraud Prevention Act of 2018. The agency secured a $3.8 million civil penalty judgment against the defendants and an order prohibiting them from continuing to make the same kinds of misrepresentations.

The Federal Trade Commission has filed an administrative complaint against Electronic Payment Systems and its owners, John Dorsey and Thomas McCann, for allegedly opening credit card processing merchant accounts for fictitious companies on behalf of Money Now Funding, a business opportunity scam that the FTC previously sued. By ignoring warning signs that the merchants were fake, Electronic Payment Systems assisted Money Now Funding in laundering millions of dollars of consumers’ credit card payments to the scammers from 2012 to 2013.

In a consent agreement settling the matter, which the FTC has accepted for public comment, Electronic Payment Systems and its owners have agreed to restrictions on the merchants for whom they can provide credit card payment processing services, as well as additional merchant screening and monitoring requirements. The FTC is not able to obtain a monetary judgment in this case because of the Supreme Court’s decision in AMG Capital Management v. FTC.

The Federal Trade Commission, working jointly with the U.S. Department of Justice, is mailing 1,179,803 refund checks totaling more than $505 million to people who were deceived by a massive payday lending scheme operated by AMG Services, Inc. and Scott A. Tucker.