CFPB, Federal Agencies, State Agencies, and Attorneys General
The CFPB has issued its eighth annual Fair Debt Collection Practices Act report covering the CFPB’s and FTC’s activities in 2018.
While the new report incorporates information from the FTC’s annual letter to the CFPB describing its FDCPA activities during the year covered by the report, the report continues the practice begun with last year’s…
The CFPB has filed a request in the District Court for the Southern District of New York to enforce a civil investigative demand (“CID”) against the Law Offices of Crystal Moroney, P.C. (“LOCM”), a debt collection law firm located in New City, New York, continuing under Director Kraninger the CFPB’s pursuit of law firms despite…
The Second Circuit recently upheld a decision finding two individual co-owners personally liable for nearly $11 million for their companies’ violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act (FTCA) and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). The companies’ business consisted largely of collecting payday loan debts they had purchased.
In FTC v. Federal Check Processing, Inc., …
The CFPB published two notices in today’s Federal Register seeking OMB approval for two surveys, one dealing with debt collection and the other with household balance sheets.
Debt collection. The request described in the notice is a resubmission of a previously published request to OMB seeking approval to conduct an online survey of 8,000…
On December 28, 2018, New York Governor Cuomo signed into law amendments to the state’s General Business Law (GBL) that address the collection of family member debts. The amendments made by Senate Bill 3491A become effective March 29, 2019.
While the legislative history indicates that the amendments are intended to address the collection of a…
Seventy-four organizations that describe themselves as “consumer, community, civil rights, faith, labor and legal services groups” have sent a letter to CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger to “reiterate our concerns about widespread debt collection abuses that we have raised in the past and the ongoing need for better protection against these abuses.”
In the letter, the…
The Attorneys General of 42 states and the District of Columbia (collectively, the States) have entered into an Assurance of Voluntary Compliance/Assurance of Discontinuance (Agreement) with Encore Capital Group, Inc. and its subsidiaries, Midland Funding, LLC and Midland Credit Management, Inc., (collectively, Midland) to settle allegations relating to Midland’s debt collection practices. According to a …
The CFPB has filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the respondent/law firm defendant in Obduskey v. McCarthy & Holthus LLP, et al., a Tenth Circuit decision that held that a law firm hired to pursue a non-judicial foreclosure under Colorado law was not a debt collector as defined…
It has been reported that, without announcement or warning, the regulations applicable to third-party debt collectors in Massachusetts may have changed. While the state’s Division of Banks (DOB) and the state’s Attorney General (AG) have traditionally regulated, respectively, third-party debt collectors and first-party creditors, the AG is reported to have changed its website recently to…
Debt collection continues to be one of the most active areas in consumer finance law. In this week’s podcast, Ballard Spahr attorneys will discuss the challenges facing the debt collection industry in private litigation and how to address them. We’ll talk about how new technology is changing the industry, assess the effect of the CFPB’s…
