Tag: Technology

The Federal Trade Commission is taking action to stop Lurn, a Maryland-based online business coaching seller, from making unfounded claims that consumers can make significant income by starting an array of online businesses. The company, its CEO Anik Singal, and spokespeople Tyrone Cohen and David Kettner have agreed to court orders that will require them to stop their unlawful practices, and require Lurn and Singal to turn over $2.5 million to the FTC to be used to refund money to consumers they harmed.

The Federal Trade Commission is sending more than $2.4 million in refunds to consumers who paid for Lurn’s business consulting programs and were deceived about the amount of money they could make from these services. 

The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with bankrupt crypto company Voyager that will permanently ban it from handling consumers’ assets and is filing suit against its former CEO, Stephen Ehrlich, for falsely claiming that customers’ accounts were insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and were “safe,” even as the company was approaching an eventual bankruptcy. The complaint also names Stephen Ehrlich’s wife, Francine Ehrlich, as a relief defendant.

In the federal court complaint, the FTC charges that from at least 2018 until it declared bankruptcy in July 2022, Voyager used promises that consumers’ deposits would be “safe” to entice them to hand over their funds. When the company failed, consumers lost access to significant assets they had saved, including ongoing salary deposits, college tuition funds, and down payments for homes, according to the complaint, which notes that consumers were locked out of their cash accounts for more than a month and lost more than $1 billion in crypto assets.

The FTC sued the health information company Surescripts, alleging that the company employed illegal vertical and horizontal restraints in order to maintain its monopolies over two electronic prescribing, or “e-prescribing,” markets: routing and eligibility.  According to the complaint, Surescripts monopolized two separate markets for e-prescription services: The market for routing e-prescriptions, which uses technology that enables health care providers to send electronic prescriptions directly to pharmacies; and the market for determining eligibility, a separate service that enables health care providers to electronically determine patients’ eligibility for prescription coverage through access to insurance coverage and benefits information, usually through a pharmacy benefit manager.The FTC alleges that Surescripts intentionally set out to keep e-prescription routing and eligibility customers on both sides of each market from using additional platforms (a practice known as multihoming) using anticompetitive exclusivity agreements, threats, and other exclusionary tactics. Among other things, the FTC alleges that Surescripts took steps to increase the costs of routing and eligibility multihoming through loyalty and exclusivity contracts.

In July 2023, the FTC filed a proposed order that would resolve the Commission’s charges. The proposed order prohibits Surescripts from engaging in exclusionary conduct and executing or enforcing non-compete agreements with current and former employees. The proposed order also goes beyond routing and eligibility, extending the same prohibitions to Surescripts’ medication history services and the company’s on-demand formulary services.

The FTC reached a settlement with the developer of the fertility app Premom over allegations it deceived users by sharing their sensitive personal information with third parties, including two China-based firms, disclosed users’ sensitive health data to AppsFlyer and Google, and failed to notify consumers of these unauthorized disclosures in violation of the Health Breach Notification Rule (HBNR).