Debt Relief Scam Ends With $7.9 Million Judgment to Settle FTC Charges

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced today that the head of a sham debt relief operation agreed to a judgment of more than $7.9 million to settle charges that he deceived consumers and charged them thousands of dollars while providing nothing in return.

In a complaint filed in May 2014, the FTC alleged that the DebtPro 123 LLC defendants falsely told consumers their programs would settle all of their debts and repair their credit. Then they told them to stop paying and communicating with creditors, which led to more debt and worse credit because of accrued interest, late charges, creditor lawsuits, garnished wages, and sometimes bankruptcy.

Under proposed stipulated court orders, the scheme’s ringleader, Bryan Taylor, and co-defendants Ryan Foland, Stacey Frion, and Kara Wilbur Taylor, are banned from selling debt relief products or services. They are also prohibited from making unsubstantiated claims for any product or service, and making material misrepresentations, either directly or through others, about any product or service. In addition, they are barred from: telemarketing without keeping certain records and making certain disclosures; profiting from customers’ personal information; and failing to properly dispose of customer information.

In the proposed stipulated order against Bryan Taylor, which imposes a judgment representing the total amount of consumer harm – more than $7.9 million – Taylor admits to the allegations made against him in the FTC’s complaint. The proposed orders against Foland, Frion, and Kara Taylor impose the same judgment, which will be suspended upon the surrender of certain assets by Foland. The full judgments will become due immediately if Foland, Frion or Kara Taylor are found to have misrepresented their financial condition. The FTC is seeking default judgments against the six corporate defendants: DebtPro 123 LLC, Allstar Processing Corp., Allstar Debt Relief LLC, Allstar Debt Relief LLC, Redwave Management Group Inc., and BET Companies Inc.

The Commission vote authorizing the staff to file the proposed stipulated final orders was 4-0. The orders are pending before the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. (The FTC notes that stipulated final orders have the force of law when approved and signed by the District Court judge.)

insideARM Perspective

We recently posted an article about similar debt relief scams. In the article, insideARM Publisher Aaron Steinberg described a relatively new technique in the suspect debt repair company handbook – the mass debt validation request. Collectors may have no choice but to plow resources into dealing with spurious requests for debt validation, a technique can often leave both collectors and consumers worse off as a result.

Similar to the way that DebtPro’s instruction to the consumer to stop paying and communicating with the creditor leads to accrued interest, fees, lawsuits, and other consequences, the mass validation requests cause delays and barriers to communication that could otherwise resolve debts.

That article also references another enforcement action, this one by the CFPB (under UDAAP rules), against World Law Group.

We will have to watch the trend unfold to see whether yet another category of supervised entity emerges for the CFPB. For now, the Bureau offers this advice to consumers for dealing with debt relief (and debt settlement) firms. Currently, debt settlement is listed in the complaint portal under “other financial services.” Debt relief, it seems, is so new that it hasn’t been added to the Portal as a term.