Compliance

In a consent order that was announced yesterday with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Regions Bank has agreed to pay $191 million in fines and restitution after it was accused of charging its customers “illegal surprise” overdraft fees on certain purchases. A copy of the consent order can be accessed …

A District Court judge in Illinois has granted motions in two separate Fair Debt Collection Practices Act class-action lawsuits to remand the cases back to state court, ruling the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue in federal court. Copies of the rulings in Navarroli v. Medicredit and Maldonado v. Credit Control …

A group of financial services organizations, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, yesterday sued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, alleging the regulator overstepped its statutory authority when it warned companies about engaging in activities that could be found to be discriminatory and claiming that it is acting outside of …

The Federal Communications Commission yesterday announced a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that seeks to crack down on illegal and fraudulent text messages, finally taking action more than a year after initially announcing the proposal. The number of complaints received by the FCC related to unwanted text messages increased by 146% …

A debt buyer has been fined $5,000 — $4,000 of which was stayed — by the Minnesota Department of Commerce after purchasing 178 charged-off accounts for collection purposes despite not having a collection agency license in the state. A copy of the settlement in the matter against Shepherd Outsourcing can …

A District Court judge in New York has granted a defendant’s motion to dismiss after it was sued for allegedly violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act because a collection letter included five references to an attorney potentially reviewing the account in question to pursue legal collection activities, which allegedly …

Buried inside a resolution introduced last week in the House of Representatives that seeks to codify that access to utilities, such as heat, water, and electricity are human rights is language that would ban the sale of uncollected household debt to collection agencies and filing “adverse” reports with credit reporting …

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of a series that is sponsored by WebRecon. WebRecon identifies serial plaintiffs lurking in your database BEFORE you contact them and expose yourself to a likely lawsuit. Protect your company from as many as one in three new consumer lawsuits by scrubbing your consumers through WebRecon …

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A bill has been introduced in the Senate that seeks to hold universities accountable for paying a portion of student loans that go into default while also allowing student loans to be discharged when an individual files for bankruptcy protection. S. 4912 was introduced last week by Sen. Josh Hawley …