The Federal Trade Commission announcement On Thursday (May 19), he will send 690,000 checks, for more than $152 million, to customers who were defrauded by a payday loan fraud scheme run by AMG Services and the owner of the business. , Scott Tucker.

This will be done through the FTC Refund Administrator. This wave of checks is the second for this case, and when completed, the FTC will have issued more than $535 million in refunds to affected customers.

According to the FTC press release, the refunds were spurred by a criminal case filed by the Justice Department. Settlements with other defendants that had been reached in the Supreme Court overturned the monetary judgment the FTC had obtained in its civil case against Tucker in April 2021.

The FTC sued AMG in 2012, alleging that AMG and its operators falsely claimed that they would charge borrowers for the loan amount in addition to a one-time financing fee.

That’s not what happened – instead, defendants made numerous withdrawals from customers’ bank accounts, adding new funding fees to each withdrawal, resulting in consumers paying more for loans than they had agreed to do.

Then, in 2017, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York issued criminal convictions against Tucker and his attorney, Timothy Muir.

In other FTC news, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he wants the FTC to look into whether identity verification service provider ID.me, used by federal agencies and states, misled people about his use of the face. recognition.

Read more: Oregon Senator Wyden urges FTC to investigate ID.me for facial recognition deception

Wyden wrote a letter with other senators to try to investigate the company.

He alleged the company claimed in blog posts and other statements that its “one-to-one” facial recognition technology was better than “one-to-many” facial recognition, where a person’s photo is queried. against a numerical list of other people. ‘ Pictures.