CFPB Sues Credit-Repair Telemarketers

On 5/22/2020, the CFPB - jointly with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Attorney General, Maura Healey - filed a lawsuit against Commonwealth Equity Group, LLC, (which does business as Key Credit Repair) and Nikitas Tsoukales, Key Credit Repair’s president and owner. The complaint issued by the CFPB and Attorney General alleges that in their telemarketing of credit-repair services, the defendants violated the Consumer Financial Protection Act’s prohibition against deceptive acts or practices and the Telemarketing Sales Rule’s prohibitions on deceptive and abusive telemarketing acts or practices.

Specifically, the complaint alleges that the defendants deceptively misrepresent that Key Credit Repair’s actions will or likely will result in a substantial increase to consumers’ credit scores and the removal of material negative entries on consumers’ credit reports when, in fact, in numerous instances, Key Credit Repair did not achieve those results. The Bureau also alleges that those misrepresentations are deceptive acts or practices in violation of the CFPA and the TSR. The Bureau further alleges that Key Credit Repair and Tsoukales engaged in abusive acts or practices in violation of the TSR by requesting and receiving payment for their credit-repair services before achieving the promised results and before giving consumers a consumer report more than six months after achieving the results to demonstrate the results.

A copy of the complaint can be found here.

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