The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide

FTC bans three defendants from selling student debt relief and telemarketing

Three defendants in a student loan debt relief scheme have been ordered to pay millions to resolve Federal Trade Commission charges that they deceived consumers by promising to reduce or eliminate their student loan debt.

A federal court found that Brian Colombana, Impetus Enterprise Inc., and Fig Tree & Co. deceptively marketed student loan debt relief services, tricked consumers into paying illegal upfront fees, and failed to deliver the promised debt relief.

The court entered judgments against the defendants of nearly $11 million. They’re banned from selling debt relief products and services and telemarketing.

It’s National Consumer Protection Week

This year’s National Consumer Protection Week is March 1-7. It’s an opportunity for consumers to learn about their rights as consumers, help them make well-informed decisions about money, and provide tips to avoid scams.

Here’s some NCPW activities this week:

All week

Follow USAGov (@usagov) on Instagram for quick, shareable consumer tips throughout the week.

Watch “The Impostors: Stealing Money, Damaging Lives,” a two-part webinar hosted by AARP. You’ll learn about the most-reported imposter scams, how to recognize one, and what to do if you think you’ve encountered a scammer.

What you need to do to get ready for a possible COVID-19 outbreak in your community

It was helpful Tuesday when a federal official advised Americans to prepare for a possible coronavirus outbreak where they live.

“It’s not so much of a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more of a question of exactly when this will happen,” Nancy Messonnier, M.D., director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a New York Times article.

Messonnier said that cities and towns should plan for “social distancing measures,” such as dividing school classes into smaller groups of students or closing schools. Meetings and conferences may have to be canceled, she said. Businesses should arrange for employees to work from home.

What do you need to do to be prepared? One federal official said to get ready in your home like it was a snow storm or hurricane. Recommendations include:

Baby boomers write about family issues, finances, and candy

Last week, I spent days looking through my photo collections for photos for a funeral. It was a huge, huge trip down memory lane. Marriages, kids, divorces, travel, deaths, and more. I feel like I’ve been through an emotional wringer. However, through it all, I had an additional realization, again, that I need to work on getting my photos better organized.

I have 50 notebooks full of photos, and I have about that many more that need to be put in archival sleeves. Also, I could take more photos out of my digital chronological files and put them in the named files so I could have them handy to use.

Anyway, above is one of the photos I found, which is now properly identified.

Meanwhile, my baby boomer blogger friends are busy, too, continuing to write great articles. Topics for this issue of the Best of Boomer Blogs are:

Education Department rule that fails to protect students from fraud challenged by lawsuit

A low-income advocacy group filed a lawsuit Wednesday to invalidate the U.S. Department of Education’s new borrower defense rules, which dump protections from predatory schools and impose standards and hurdles for defrauded students seeking to cancel loans.

The lawsuit was filed by the Project on Predatory Student Lending and Public Citizen Litigation Group on behalf of the New York Legal Assistance Group. The lawsuit challenges borrower defense regulations published in September 2019 that are due to take effect in July 2020.

Federal law states that students can ask to cancel their federal student loans when the schools they attend engage in misconduct or close suddenly. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education issued new rules to protect student borrowers and federal taxpayers. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos attempted to block those rules from going into effect three times – and the groups suing now were successful in having those attempts declared illegal.

Americans resolving to pay off debts and save money in 2020, survey shows

The New Year is approaching rapidly, and money continues to be America’s top concern with almost 99 million people planning to make a financial resolution for 2020.

WalletHub, a personal finance website, conducted a survey of the “Top 10 Financial Resolutions for 2020” and found the No. 1 financial resolution for men is to save more, while women are focused on paying off debt.

Other highlights of the survey include:

University of Phoenix settles with FTC for $191 million over deceptive ads

The University of Phoenix and its parent company, Apollo Education Group, will settle for a record $191 million to resolve Federal Trade Commission charges that they used deceptive advertisements, which falsely described their relationships and job opportunities with companies such as AT&T, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Twitter, and The American Red Cross.

Under the settlement approved by the FTC, UOP will pay $50 million in cash as well as cancel $141 million in debts owed to the school by students who were harmed by the deceptive ads.

"This is the largest settlement the Commission has obtained in a case against a for-profit school,” said Andrew Smith, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Students making important decisions about their education need the facts, not fantasy job opportunities that do not exist."

Facts and figures for Labor Day 2019

Source: WalletHub

Copyright 2019, Rita R. Robison, Consumer and Personal Finance Journalist

CFPB settles its predatory lending lawsuit against ITT Educational Services

Photo: Dwight Burdette

ITT Educational Services Inc. has agreed to a settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB to resolve the agency’s lawsuit, which alleges that ITT engaged in predatory lending practices in its private loan program.

The CFPB’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in 2014, alleges that ITT helped to create private loan programs for students at ITT Technical Institute, the school run by ITT until it filed for bankruptcy and closed in 2016. The CFPB alleges that ITT improperly induced students to take out those loans to pay the tuition amounts not covered by loans or other tuition assistance from the federal government. The agency’s complaint also alleges that ITT knew that the student borrowers didn’t understand the terms and conditions of the loans and couldn’t afford them, resulting in high default rates.

Appeals court decides in favor of student loan borrowers

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit issued an unanimous decision Thursday that opens the door for student loan borrowers to sue their servicer when they’re misled or mistreated. The three-judge panel ruled in the case Nelson v. Great Lakes Education Loan Services Inc. that federal law doesn’t prevent the plaintiff Nicole Nelson, and the class that she seeks to represent from suing their student loan servicer under state law.

U.S. PIRG and the Center for Responsible Lending had filed an amicus brief in support of the student loan borrower.

“Careless and often expensive mistakes from loan service providers exacerbate the student loan crisis, deepening the financial hole for cash-strapped students through no fault of their own,” said Kaitlyn Vitez, U.S. PIRG’s higher education campaign director. “State attorneys general and private attorneys should take the Nelson decision as a green light to defend student loan borrowers in the absence of federal action.”