Category: Scams & Your Rights
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Walmart will pay $50 million over opioid prescriptions the Justice Department called invalid
Walmart has agreed to pay $50 million to resolve a Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Administration case built around how the retailer’s pharmacies handled opioid prescriptions for nearly a decade. The deal, announced August 28, closes out a civil lawsuit federal prosecutors first filed in December 2020 in Delaware. It also locks in new compliance…
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The $700 million Google Play settlement is now paying out, mostly without a claim form
Google’s Play Store customers who spent money on apps and in-app purchases between August 2016 and September 2023 are starting to see money move back into their accounts. A federal judge signed off on the $700 million antitrust settlement earlier this month, clearing the final legal hurdle in a five-year fight over how Google ran…
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A lender’s breach exposed Social Security numbers and bank account numbers for 734,828 borrowers
Heights Finance Holdings Co., a South Carolina-based consumer lender that operates installment-loan branches under brands including Heights Finance, Southern Finance, Covington Credit and Quick Credit across roughly a dozen states, disclosed this month that hackers broke into a third-party cloud platform holding customer records. The exposed data includes Social Security numbers, tax identification numbers, driver’s…
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A Georgia man drew the maximum 20 years for a $380 million Ponzi that emptied college funds
A federal judge in Atlanta handed down the maximum prison term the law allows to the man behind what prosecutors call likely the largest Ponzi scheme in Georgia history. Todd Burkhalter is now serving 20 years for a fraud that took in roughly $380 million from more than 2,000 investors, many of whom, prosecutors say,…
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Americans reported losing about $16 billion to fraud last year, and $3.5 billion of that went to imposters
The Federal Trade Commission’s latest tally of what Americans said they lost to fraud in 2025 lands at roughly $16 billion, the highest calendar-year figure the agency has published. Of that total, $3.5 billion traces to imposter scams — schemes where someone pretends to be a bank, a government agency, or a familiar company —…
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The FTC shut down a credit-repair operation that took nearly $200 million by posing as debt collectors
A federal court in Arizona has temporarily shut down a sprawling credit-repair network the Federal Trade Commission accuses of taking in nearly $200 million by posing as debt collectors and creditors. The FTC alleges the operation, doing business as Credit Glory since at least 2016, bought paid search ads that intercepted people already looking up…
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A boiler room sold $74 million in pre-IPO shares to more than 800 investors, many of them retirees
More than 800 people, many of them retirees, thought they had found a way into some of the most sought-after private companies in the country before Wall Street ever got the chance to buy in. The Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that what they actually got were shares marked up by tens of millions of…
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The SEC says 38 firms used phony filings and fake auditors to pass as registered advisers
An investor searching for a financial adviser online has no easy way to spot a name built purely on paper. That gap is what the Securities and Exchange Commission says 38 entities exploited, filing paperwork with the agency designed to look like proof of legitimacy without a licensed adviser, a real office, or a working…
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Social Security’s watchdog says no company can transfer your call to the agency
A caller who says they represent a familiar retailer or bank flags a purchase the customer does not recognize, then offers to connect the call to Social Security or its watchdog to straighten things out. According to the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General, that single moment — the “transfer” — is the…
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The IRS is warning about fake calculators built around the new tax law
Millions of taxpayers spent this year’s filing season trying to figure out exactly what the Working Families Tax Cuts law was worth to their own return, and the Internal Revenue Service says some of the online calculators built to answer that question are not run by anyone the agency trusts. The fake versions promise a…