AG James: T-Mobile/sprint Megamerger Remains A Bad Deal For Consumers, Innovation, And Workers

NEW YORK – Attorney General Letitia James today led a coalition of 14 Attorneys General from across the nation expressing concern about a newly announced deal — approved, in principle, by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) — supporting the proposed megamerger between telecommunications giants T-Mobile US Inc. and Sprint Corporation.  “The promises made by DISH and T-Mobile in this deal are the kinds of promises only robust competition can guarantee,” said Attorney General Letitia James. “We have serious concerns that cobbling together this new fourth mobile player, with the government picking winners and losers, will not address the merger’s harm to consumers, workers, and innovation."

DOJ approves T-Mobile-Sprint merger

The Department of Justice on Friday announced it has approved the $26 billion T-Mobile–Sprint merger, paving the way towards a deal that will combine two of the country's largest mobile carriers into one company with more than 80 million U.S. customers.   The department's approval means both federal agencies overseeing the merger have given it their blessing, though a legal challenge by state attorneys general could still block the deal from going through.

CFPB and the New York Attorney General Settle with Debt Collection Group

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) and the New York Attorney General today filed proposed settlements with debt collectors Douglas MacKinnon, Northern Resolution Group, LLC, Enhanced Acquisitions, LLC, Delray Capital, LLC, and Mark Gray. The individuals and companies are debt-collectors who conducted business together based in Buffalo, New York. Under the proposed settlement with MacKinnon, Northern Resolution Group, and Enhanced Acquisitions, they will be banned from the industry and must pay $60 million. Under the proposed settlement with Delray Capital and Gray, they will be banned from the industry and a judgment for civil money penalties and redress will be entered against them.

Congressman Cline’s Bankruptcy Bill Headed to Senate With Bipartisan Support

The Mueller hearings dominated the headlines on Capitol Hill this week. But action was still happening on the House floor with a Virginia congressman’s reform of chapter 11 bankruptcy    In the game of Monopoly, a player who cannot pay what they owe is bankrupt. Game over. You lose. But in real life, those people are still in the game. And many small businesses feel the system is rigged against them, with rules designed for major corporations with deep pockets.

US Bank enters co-branding deal on credit cards with BMW

U.S. Bank said it entered a co-branding agreement with BMW Financial Services to issue credit cards that will provide enhanced digital experiences to BMW, Mini and BMW Mottorad enthusiasts, according to a press release.  As part of the agreement, U.S. Bank said it also acquired the existing credit card portfolio of BMW Bank of North America. 

U.S. regulators to end mortgage lending exemption for Fannie, Freddie in 2021

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators said on Thursday they plan to end an exemption for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that permits them to back risky mortgages, a move that would reduce the government’s footprint in the housing market, potentially increasing borrowing costs. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will allow that exemption to expire at the beginning of 2021 but may extend it for a short time “to facilitate a smooth and orderly transition,” the agency said. CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger said ending the exemption would ensure fair competition across the mortgage market. While she said she was seeking a smooth transition, the change could make it more difficult for some borrowers to obtain loans at affordable rates by limiting the ability of Fannie and Freddie to guarantee certain mortgages.

House Of Representatives Cracking Down On Robocalls

Find robocalls a nuisance? Evidently, so does the House of Representatives, as it cracks down on the potentially illegal calls. With the new House bill, robocalling operations will face tougher penalties.  In 2018 alone, 48 billion robocalls were made, which is 50 percent more than the robocalls in the previous year. In fact, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. says that what started as a nuisance is now threatening the way people use their phones.

Associated to buy Illinois-based bank

GREEN BAY (WLUK) -- A bank based in Northeast Wisconsin is expanding its reach into the St. Louis area.   Green Bay-based Associated Banc-Corp on Thursday announced plans to buy Illinois-based First Staunton Bancshares, Inc. First National Bank in Staunton has more than 30,000 customers in the eastern St. Louis metropolitan area.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Releases Qualified Mortgage ANPR

Washington, D.C. — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) today issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) seeking information relating to the expiration of the temporary qualified mortgage provision applicable to certain mortgage loans eligible for purchase or guarantee by the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in the Bureau’s Ability to Repay/Qualified Mortgage (ATR/QM) Rule. This provision, also known as the GSE patch, is scheduled to expire no later than Jan. 10, 2021. 

AG Shapiro Announces Relief for 80,000 Pennsylvanians Targeted by Online Payday Loan Scheme

HARRISBURG —Attorney General Josh Shapiro today announced a settlement with Think Finance, a national online payday lender, and an associated private equity firm for allegedly engineering a $133 million illegal online payday loan scheme that targeted as many as 80,000 Pennsylvania consumers. The settlement will void all remaining balances on the illegal loans. Pennsylvania is one of the leading creditors that negotiated this comprehensive settlement with Think Finance as part of its bankruptcy plan, which is pending approval before the Bankruptcy Court and subsequent approval by the U.S. Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania.

NAFCU urges safe harbor under caller ID framework; House passes robocall bill

NAFCU joined with several other trade groups Wednesday to offer support and additional recommendations to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on its proposed order to require phone companies to incorporate a caller identification framework – SHAKEN/STIR – and provide a safe harbor to those that implement a network-wide blocking of calls that fail caller authentication under the framework.

Your college major may affect your ability to get a loan — consumer advocates say that’s a problem

When students choose where to attend college and what subject to major in, they can reasonably expect those decisions to have an impact on certain aspects of their life, like their career or earnings.   But if some financial technology companies have their way, that information could increasingly be used to determine a lot more — including whether a borrower can access credit and how much they pay for it.

WebRecon Stats for June 2019: Summer Doldrums?

Quick analysis: Litigation for June 2019 followed a now-familiar path, with FDCPA and TCPA dipping significantly down from the previous month (-29.2% and -26.4% respectively) while FCRA increased +8.4%. Year-to-date shows the same trends, but more moderated with FDCPA -7.5%, FCRA +2% and TCPA -12.7%.

Attorney General James’ Statement On Shield Act

NEW YORK – Attorney General Letitia James today applauded Governor Andrew Cuomo for taking action and signing the Stop Hacks and Improve Electronic Data Security (SHIELD) Act — a legislative priority of the Office of the Attorney General during the 2019 session — into law. This consumer privacy policy updates New York’s laws governing notification requirements, consumer data protection obligations, and broadens the Attorney General’s oversight regarding data breaches impacting New Yorkers.

CFPB Files Answer in Lawsuit Challenging Delay in Section 1071 Implementation

The CFPB has filed an answer in the lawsuit filed in May 2019 in a California federal district court by the California Reinvestment Coalition, the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders, and two individual small business owners seeking a declaration that the CFPB’s failure to issue regulations implementing Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act violates the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and requiring the CFPB to promptly issue such regulations.

Report: CFPB should assess risks to cloud systems before their deployment

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau hasn’t comprehensively assessed risks prior to deploying new cloud systems, according to a recent report. As a result, CFPB hasn’t issued a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program provisional authority to operate (P-ATO) for a cloud system supporting its Consumer Response Call Center. The system itself wasn’t identified in the Federal Reserve Office of Inspector General evaluation of CFPB released July 1, but the agency uses five FedRAMP cloud systems: Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s Content Delivery Services, General Dynamics Information Technology’s Customer eXperience Platform, Salesforce Government Cloud, and CylancePROTECT.

FTC Imposes $5 Billion Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

Facebook, Inc. will pay a record-breaking $5 billion penalty, and submit to new restrictions and a modified corporate structure that will hold the company accountable for the decisions it makes about its users’ privacy, to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the company violated a 2012 FTC order by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information.

FTC Sues Cambridge Analytica, Settles with Former CEO and App Developer

The Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against data analytics company Cambridge Analytica, and filed settlements for public comment with Cambridge Analytica’s former chief executive and an app developer who worked with the company, alleging they employed deceptive tactics to harvest personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting.

DCS2019 Room Block Ends August 16, Book Your Rooms Today!

Have you booked your room at the Red Rock Hotel?   We have insured that all Debt Connection Symposium and Expo 2019 conference attendees get a conference-discounted rate of $190 for a standard room.  So if you do not have your room reserved, please act fast, space is limited, and we expect to sell out.   Debt Connection Symposium and Expo 2019 will be held on September 10-12, 2019 at the Red Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. 

Standard Room Discount Rate For Registered Attendees

Hotel Information:
Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa
11011 W Charleston Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89135
Phone: 702-797-7777
Reservation Code: RCIDCS
Room Block Ends August 16, 2019
The room rate of $190 is for DCS2019 registered conference attendees only.

IMPORTANT: Please be advised that DCS2019 has not authorized any third-party housing services or third-party housing companies to represent the event and sell hotel rooms on our behalf. Only reserve your hotel room directly with the Red Rock Hotel using the information listed above.

CFPB issues report on tradeline reporting by third-party debt collectors

The CFPB has issued a new report on tradelines reported by third-party debt collectors as reflected on credit reports compiled by nationwide consumer reporting agencies.  The third-party collector tradelines consist of those reported by debt buyers and those reported by non-buyers (i.e. where the debt is still owned by the original creditor).  A single debt collections firm may collect on both debts it owns and debts that others own. The report is based on information from the CFPB’s Consumer Credit Panel, which is described as “a longitudinal, nationally representative sample of approximately five million de-identified credit records” from one of the three national CRAs for the period Q2 2004 through Q2 2018.

Fintech Impact – A Long Way to Go

Given its press coverage, one would conclude that financial technology (fintech) has all but taken over residential real estate and its financing. However, a new report from Jung Choi, Karan Kaul, and Laurie Goodman of the Urban Institute (UI) states that the online share of all home sales (to owner-occupants, investors, fix-and-flippers, and others) is less than 15 percent.  Compare this to other online shares; book sales, 55 percent; music, 80 percent; electronics, 35 percent.

New Cyber Attack Trends Report Reveals That Digital Criminals Made Off With $45 Billion in 2018

A new report on cyber attack trends that combines information from a number of high-level sources has just been released, and it reveals a startling amount of cyber crime growth. The report revealed that cyber crime became a $45 billion industry in 2018, up tens of billions of dollars from the previous year. The report from the Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance (OTA) identifies trends by using data from sources including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Symantec, prominent cybercrime journal Cybersecurity Ventures, security consultant Risk Based Security, the Identity Theft Resource Center and the Internet Society’s own internal data to create as comprehensive a picture as possible of the annual cyber crime market.

4th Circuit Finds Lenders Entitled to Tribal Sovereign Immunity

A panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently foundthat two lending entities affiliated with the Lac Vieux Desert Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians (the Tribe) are entitled to tribal sovereign immunity as “arms of the tribe”.  The panel then ordered the dismissal of an underlying putative class action brought by five Virginia residents who claimed the payday loans they obtained online from the tribe-affiliated lenders violated state usury laws.  The panel’s decision reverses that of the district court, which held that the affiliated lenders failed to sufficiently prove they were “arms of the tribe” and thus were subject to the court’s jurisdiction.

FCC’s Pai Proposes to Expand ‘Written’ Hearings

CreditCompass™ from TransUnion Reaches Milestone with Over 50,000 Consumers Seeking Individualized Plans to Reach Credit Score Goals

More than 50,000 consumers are in the process of improving their credit health using TransUnion’s (NYSE: TRU) CreditCompass™, a groundbreaking credit product launched just three months ago.   CreditCompass is based on the real credit experiences of millions of consumers and provides specific steps for improving individual credit health.

CFPB Issues Report on Tradeline Reporting by Third-Party Debt Collectors

The CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) has issued a new report on tradelines reported by third-party debt collectors as reflected on credit reports compiled by nationwide consumer reporting agencies. The third-party collector tradelines consist of those reported by debt buyers and those reported by non-buyers (i.e. where the debt is still owned by the original creditor). A single debt collections firm may collect on both debts it owns and debts that others own. The report is based on information from the CFPB’s Consumer Credit Panel, which is described as “a longitudinal, nationally representative sample of approximately five million de-identified credit records” from one of the three national CRAs for the period Q2 2004 through Q2 2018.

Pushing for change for banks

For Richard Hunt, lobbying on behalf of the nation’s banks isn’t quite what it used to be. As president and CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association (CBA) since 2009, Hunt has led the group’s efforts to repair the industry’s post-crisis reputation while working for changes to the rules imposed on banks after the 2008 recession. Hunt, a former House chief of staff, has advocated for banks and the broader financial services industry since 2001, in the bullish days of the early 2000s economic expansion.

Attorney General James Objects To Mortgage Servicer’s Unlawful Attempt To Strip Away Rights Of Homeowners

NEW YORK – Attorney General Letitia James has taken action against Ditech Holding Corporation (Ditech) by filing a brief in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, opposing the mortgage servicer’s attempted end-run around statutory protections for homeowners.

$575 million Equifax settlement illustrates security basics for your business

Patch your software. Segment your network. Monitor for intruders. According to tech experts, those are security basics for businesses of any size. But when you’re industry giant Equifax – a company in possession of staggering amounts of highly confidential information about more than 200 million Americans – it’s almost unthinkable not to implement those fundamental protections. An FTC, CFPB, and State AG settlement of at least $575 million illustrates the injury to consumers when companies ignore reasonably foreseeable (and preventable) threats to sensitive data. Read on for security tips for your business and what consumers can do to get compensation for their losses and sign up for free credit monitoring.

States Put Stamp on Student Loan Oversight

Before the legislative session that began in January, consumer groups in Colorado had twice sought to work with state lawmakers to pass a bill establishing a student borrower bill of rights, coming up short both times. But with Democrats in control of both state houses in 2019 and a new attorney general focused on consumer protections, the measure passed in May with days left in the legislative session.

Equifax, regulators sign $700m deal to settle data breach lawsuits

Equifax signed a settlement today to lay to rest lawsuits brought forward by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), state attorneys, and a class-action case relating to the firm's 2017 data breach. The security incident was caused by a failure to resolve a known security flaw in Apache Struts, despite a patch being made available two months prior to the breach. This permitted a hacker to access the credit monitoring company's systems, leading to the theft of records belonging to over 146 million users. Names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, and driver's license details were among the data sets stolen. 

Residents welcoming first new community banks since the recession

$1,603,246 Retail

Sea Side Management, LLC

(800) 917-7183

$1,453,323.52 Other

Sea Side Management, LLC

(800) 917-7183

Debt Connection Symposium & Expo 2019

Resource Management Services, Inc.

National Creditors Bar Association 2019 Fall Conference

National Creditors Bar Association