District Court: FTC allegations against credit card processor can proceed

Courts FTC Payment Processors FTC Act Credit Cards Telemarketing Sales Rule

On August 28, the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona denied motions to dismiss an enforcement action brought by the FTC against a group of individuals and entities that allegedly facilitated a telemarketing scheme that previously resulted in the principal actors in the scheme settling with the FTC and later pleading guilty to state criminal charges. The alleged scheme involved “credit card laundering”—the creation of fictitious entities to process customer credit card transactions so that the actual entity receiving the funds would not be identified. The defendants in the current matter are an Independent Sales Organization and several of its officers allegedly involved in that effort (prior Info Bytes coverage here). The defendants first argued that the relevant part of the FTC Act only permits injunctive relief and that the FTC’s requests for restitution and disgorgement were improper because those forms of relief are penalties, not equitable relief, under Kokesh v. Securities and Exchange Commission. The court noted, however, that the Supreme Court in Kokesh expressly limited the holding to the question of the statute of limitations applicable to the SEC, and that the Ninth Circuit has subsequently approved decisions granting restitution and disgorgement under the FTC Act. The defendants also argued that injunctive relief was not warranted where the unlawful conduct in question ceased in 2013, but the court ruled that the FTC need only show that it has “reason to believe” that a defendant is violating or is about to violate the law. The court declined to address the FTC’s argument that its “reason to believe” decision is unreviewable, but it found that the FTC had pled sufficient facts to establish that it has reason to believe that the defendants would violate the statute. In particular, the court noted that a “court’s power to grant injunctive relief survives the discontinuance of illegal conduct,” that “an inference arises from illegal past conduct that future violations may occur,” and that “courts should be wary of a defendant’s termination of illegal conduct when a defendant voluntarily ceases unlawful conduct in anticipation of formal intervention.” Those factors were all present, along with the fact that the defendants “remain in the same professional occupation.”