The Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday that it is returning nearly $800,000 to consumers who were victimized by Hylan Asset Management and its owners, which collected $24 million during the four years it was allegedly buying and selling fake debt portfolios.
The defendants surrendered assets and funds to the FTC and agreed to be permanently barred from participating in the collection industry as part of their 2019 settlement. More than 1,400 consumers will receive checks of about $539 each to help cover their losses in the scam.
The settlement between the FTC, the Attorney General of New York, and the defendants — Hylan and its owners, Andrew Shaevel and Jon Purizhansky — was reached in 2019. The defendants paid $675,575 in fines, and one of the agencies used by the defendants — Worldwide Processing Group, agreed to pay a fine of $118,000. The sum total of those fines represents the money that the FTC is using to repay consumers who were taken advantage of.
In announcing the restitution that is being paid back to consumers, the FTC used the news as an opportunity to promote its lobbying of Congress to restore the FTC’s power to seek monetary relief in its enforcement cases. The Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the FTC lacked the authority it thought it had under the FTC Act to do so.
Charges were initially filed in this case back in 2018. The defendants were charged with violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and state law in New York of buying portfolios of phantom debts and placing them with third-party agencies for collections. Even after being notified that consumers did not owe many of the debts being collected upon, the defendants continued their operation, according to the FTC.
