Santa Monica company to pay $1.5 million for illegally obtaining financial data from millions of consumers – Orange County Register

A Santa Monica company that is accused of luring millions of consumers into providing sensitive information on the pretext of connecting them to lenders will have to pay $1.5 million in civil penalties imposed by the Commerce Commission. offered by Federal Trade.

ITMedia Solutions LLC, which generates leads, will also face restrictions on the sale and use of consumer data due to an FTC lawsuit filed last week.

Officials from ITMedia and its affiliates in Nevada and Utah listed as defendants in the lawsuit include Michael Ambrose, Daniel Negari, Jason Ramin, Grant Carpenter, Anisha Hancock and Sione Kaufusi.

ITMedia representatives did not respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment.

As of December 2012, ITMedia operated at least 200 websites that posted ads targeting consumers looking for payday loans online, consumers with poor credit, and consumers is seeking personal loans and installments in the amount of up to $35,000, according to the lawsuit.

Websites used by ITMedia and its affiliates to target consumers include cashadvance.com, personalloans.com, badcreditloans.com, and others with similar names. The sites claim that they find loans for consumers who complete an online form by providing their Social Security number and bank account, which the company has described as a loan application or request. .

To convince consumers to complete an application, ITMedia’s websites promise to share sensitive information only with a network of trusted lending partners and financial providers for lending purposes. .

In practice, however, ITMedia and other defendants sold consumer information to marketing firms and others without regard to how the information would be used, according to the lawsuit. .

“ITMedia tricked millions into providing sensitive financial information and then sold it to non-lending companies,” Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. “The company’s mining and misuse of this data broke the law in a number of ways.”

As of January 2016, approximately 84% of loan applications collected through ITMedia websites are not sold to lenders but are instead disseminated to marketing, debt relief and credit repair firms. will resell consumer information, the lawsuit alleges.

“In many cases, ITMedia is not even aware of the purpose for which a company purchases consumer data, or even the physical location of the company,” the FTC said.

ITMedia sold consumer information to a company group was sued by the FTC last year for marketing short-term loan products that charge consumers tens of millions of dollars.

The complaint also alleges ITMedia violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by illegally obtaining and reselling consumers’ credit scores, putting them at risk of identity theft and fraudulent activities. other cheats.

The defendants agreed to pay $1.5 million in civil penalties to settle the FTC’s charges against them.

A proposed settlement prohibits defendants from making misleading statements to consumers about how personal information will be used.

They are also not authorized to sell consumers’ personal information other than in limited circumstances and are required to screen recipients of such information.