The FTC filed a case back in January of 2017 against Danny Pierce and Andrew Lloyd, claiming that they ‘misrepresented’ material facts when advertising. Specifically, these two individuals would run advertisements (mostly on CraigsList) about rental properties that were for rent. When someone would express interest, they would offer them a tour of the property, but only if they would get a free credit check.
These free credit checks were legit, but would also come with a recurring $29.94 charge for a monitoring service, which many of the victims didn’t even know existed until the charges showed up on their credit cards.
This deceptive marketing practice alone would be a violation of many regulations, but the defendants were even more deceptive. The rental properties that they claimed to have available didn’t even belong to them, and they had no right to rent them out even if they wanted to. The properties were simply bait to bring people in and give them what appeared to be a valid reason for running their credit reports.
Pierce will have to pay $117,000 and Lloyd has to pay $645,000. This is a part of the $6.8 million judgment, the remainder of which is being suspended once these initial payments are made.
This resolves this portion of the case.
The FTC is continuing to work the case against other defendants including Credit Bureau Center, LLC and Michael Brown.
