WASHINGTON—The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Commonwealth of Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey have jointly 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 Bureau reported.
As alleged in the complaint, from 2016 through 2019 alone, Key Credit Repair enrolled nearly 40,000 consumers nationwide, and since 2011, it collected at least $23 million in fees from consumers. The Bureau alleges that in their telemarketing of credit-repair services, the defendants violated the Consumer Financial Protection Act’s (CFPA) prohibition against deceptive acts or practices and the Telemarketing Sales Rule’s (TSR) prohibitions on deceptive and abusive telemarketing acts or practices.
The Bureau and Massachusetts’s complaint, filed in the federal district court for the District of Massachusetts, specifically 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 alleges that those misrepresentations are deceptive acts or practices in violation of the CFPA and the TSR.
Additional Allegations
The Bureau said it 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.
The Bureau further alleges that the alleged violations of the TSR also constitute violations of the CFPA.
The complaint seeks redress to consumers, an injunction, and the imposition of civil money penalties.
A copy of the complaint filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts is available here.