Tag: Southeast Region

An Atlanta-based debt collection company and its owners will be permanently banned from the debt collection industry under the terms of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. 

In its complaint against Critical Resolution Mediation, LLC, along with Brian Charles McKenzie and Tracy Dottrice Warren, the FTC alleged that the defendants and their agents threatened consumers with arrest and imprisonment and tried to collect debts that consumers did not actually owe.

The FTC’s complaint alleged that Critical Resolution’s collectors regularly posed as law enforcement officers, attorneys, mediators, or process servers, lending credence to their threats about supposed unpaid debts. In many cases, the defendants were attempting to collect on so-called “phantom” debt—debts that either were never owed—or debts that were no longer owed.

Moneta Management, LLC, Moneta Management, Inc., and their CEO Michael Todd Greene settled FTC allegations that they knowingly provided false or deceptive information to credit card and ACH processors to obtain merchant processing for a student debt relief scam operated by Brandon Frere and his three companies.

One of the biggest payment processing companies and its former executive will pay more than $40.2 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges they knowingly processed payments and laundered, or assisted laundering of, credit card transactions for scams that targeted hundreds of thousands of consumers.

The FTC alleged that First Data Merchant Services, LLC and its former vice president, Chi “Vincent” Ko, allegedly ignored repeated warnings from employees, banks, and others that they were laundering, or assisting laundering, and facilitating payments for companies that were breaking the law over a number of years.