The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on July 28 ordered U.S. Bank to pay a $37.5 million penalty to compensate harmed consumers after the bank illegally accessed customers’ credit reports and associates opened checking and savings accounts, credit cards, and lines of credit without their customers’ permission. The violations Read More
Uber Technologies recently entered a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with the Department of Justice resulting from the ridesharing company’s coverup of a massive 2016 data breach. Under the terms of the NPA, Uber accepted responsibility for its conduct in the wake of the 2016 data breach, specifically for concealing the data Read More
Three major poultry producers—Cargill, Sanderson Farms, and Wayne Farms—entered into proposed consent decrees with the Department of Justice to resolve allegations that they engaged in anticompetitive practices by secretly exchanging wage and benefits information about their plant workers in violation of the Sherman Act. They also agree to pay a Read More
Equitable Financial Life Insurance Co. agreed to pay a $50 million civil penalty, which will be distributed to harmed investors, to settle charges that it provided misleading account statements to about 1.4 million investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which pursued the fraud case, said that the statements included materially Read More
Bank of America has been ordered to pay $225 million in civil penalties and redress to harmed consumers for engaging in abusive practices when it denied consumers access to unemployment benefits on prepaid debit cards at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In a separate case, Bank of America is Read More
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued two separate orders on July 5, simultaneously filing and settling charges against two separate swap dealers for failing to comply with their reporting obligations in violation of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations. In the first action, the CFTC ordered BNP Paribas, Read More
In the largest penalty ever imposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission against an audit firm, Ernst & Young must pay $100 million and undertake “extensive remedial measures to fix the firm’s ethical issues” to resolve charges that its audit professionals cheated on exams required to obtain and maintain Certified Read More
CafePress must enhance its data security practices, and its former owner, Residual Pumpkin, must pay $500,000 to provide redress to data breach victims, to resolve allegations the online retailer failed to secure consumers’ sensitive personal data and covered up a major data breach, the Federal Trade Commission announced on June Read More
Registered investment adviser A.G. Morgan Financial Advisors (AGM), its owner, and its former chief compliance officer each face charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission for violations of federal securities laws, the agency announced this week. According to the SEC’s complaint, AGM, owner Vincent Camarda, and AGM’s former Chief Compliance Read More
For the third time in eight years, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith has been ordered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) to pay restitution to thousands of its customers who were charged more than necessary related to mutual fund shares. In this latest action, Merrill Lynch agreed to Read More
