Image credit: Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has gotten a federal court to shut down Credit Glory, a network of 16 companies accused of collecting nearly $200 million from consumers through fake credit repair services and illegal fees. According to the FTC's complaint (PDF), the operation ran since at least 2016 under Credit Glory and more than a dozen related company names. A judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona has temporarily frozen the operation while the case proceeds.
The FTC says Credit Glory bought Google search ads that appeared when consumers looked up specific creditors, including military-related lenders like the Army & Air Force Exchange Service and USAA. Credit Glory then used those ads to route servicemembers and other consumers to its own telemarketers instead of the real creditor.
Those telemarketers then led consumers believe they'd reached the actual debt collector or creditor, according to the FTC. Once on the phone, Credit Glory charged a small fee, often described as needed to "verify" the consumer's identity or review their credit report, then followed with a second charge of several hundred dollars before doing any work. Under the Credit Repair Organizations Act, that's illegal: a credit repair company can't charge you until it has finished the work it promised.
The FTC also says Credit Glory kept billing consumers on a recurring basis without clearly disclosing that the charges would continue, and routinely denied refund requests when customers tried to cancel. In some cases, the company disputed consumers' legitimate debts and filed false identity theft reports on IdentityTheft.gov without telling them.
If you've paid any of Credit Glory's companies for credit repair – Credit Glory, Credit Sage, Joy Credit Software, Clerk Credit Systems, Standard Scores, Collection Payments, Collections Dispute, Collections Expert, Collections Support, Credit Cop, Dispute Collection, Glorious Credit, or Joyful Credit – you can report it to the FTC directly.
To avoid these scams, remember this rule: a legitimate credit repair company can't ask you for money before it does the work. If someone asks you to pay a fee just to "verify" your identity, hang up and contact the creditor yourself using the number on your own billing statement.
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