Chargebacks911 Ordered to Pay $150K Judgment for Violating FTC Act, Fla. Law

Chargebacks911 and its officers Gary Cardone and Monica Eaton are permanently enjoined from providing any documentation they know or should know is misleading or materially inaccurate when providing chargeback mitigation services, or failing to disclose any information they know is relevant and material, said U.S. District Judge Mary Scriven's order Wednesday (docket 8:23-cv-00796) in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa. The April lawsuit, brought by the FTC and Florida, alleged Chargebacks911 unfairly thwarted consumers trying to dispute credit card charges, violating the FTC Act and the Florida Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act. When submitting documents in connection with a chargeback, the defendants are enjoined from including screenshots of webpages they know are “materially different from the webpages the consumer saw at the time of the transaction,” the order said. Defendants are enjoined from engaging in any prohibited or unlawful tactics to avoid fraud and risk monitoring programs established by any financial institution, including balancing or distributing sales transaction volume or sales transaction activity among multiple merchant accounts or merchant billing descriptors to avoid fraud or risk monitoring programs established by a financial institution, the order said. Defendants are also enjoined from "splitting a single sales transaction into multiple smaller transactions" to avoid fraud or risk monitoring programs and from causing a “sham sales transaction,” including microtransactions or sales transactions by a merchant to avoid fraud monitoring programs, the order said. The final judgment amount in the fraud case is $150,000, including $50,000 owed to the Florida attorney general for attorneys’ fees and costs, the order said. A year following the order, each defendant must submit a compliance report, Scriven said.