Mar 11, 2020 | Consumer Protection, Employment & Technology Archive
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against FCA US, LLC On Behalf of Current and Former Owners of Jeep Wrangler Vehicles (Model Years 2018, 2019, 2020) and Jeep Gladiator Vehicles (Model Year 2020) – Alleged Defect Which Causes Steering Wheel to Shake Violently – Referred to As Jeep “Death Wobble”
Kehoe Law Firm, P.C. is making consumers aware that on March 6, 2020, a class action lawsuit was filed against FCA US LLC in United States District Court, Central District of California, on behalf of the Plaintiff and classes of current and former owners of the Jeep Wrangler (Model Years 2018-2020) and the Jeep Gladiator (Model Year 2020).
According to the class action complaint,
The Jeep Vehicles contain a defectively designed and/or manufactured solid front axle and damping system that causes the steering wheel to shake violently after encountering common and expected road variations while operating at highway speeds. This phenomenon is referred to as the Jeep ‘Death Wobble,’ a term commonly used among Jeep owners to identify this condition, which is known to FCA.
The ‘Death Wobble’ is the seemingly uncontrollable side-to-side shaking of a Jeep’s front-end steering components and – by extension – its steering wheel, presenting a serious safety hazard to the driver of the Jeep Vehicle and surrounding drivers. The ‘Death Wobble’ makes the Jeep unsafe to operate by impairing the operator’s ability to steer and control the Jeep Vehicle while presenting a safety risk to the occupants and others on the road.[] [Citation omitted; Emphasis added.]
The class action complaint also alleged that
FCA has known the ‘Death Wobble’ has plagued its Jeep Wrangler line of vehicles for over a decade. Unable to remedy the ‘Death Wobble,’ FCA consistently puts forth temporary remedies to conceal the ‘Death Wobble’ until the warranty coverage expires. FCA does so knowing these temporary remedies have never rectified the ‘Death Wobble’ in prior Jeep Wrangler models. Beginning with the 2018 Jeep Wrangler model year, FCA redesigned portions of the steering system, but the ‘Death Wobble’ remained. [Emphasis added.]
Jeep Wrangler (Model Years 2018-2020) and Jeep Gladiator (Model Year 2020) Owners
If you purchased or leased a Jeep Wrangler (Model Years 2018-2020) or Jeep Gladiator (Model Year 2020) and have questions or concerns about potential legal claims, please contact Kehoe Law Firm, P.C., Michael Yarnoff, Esq., (215) 792-6676, Ext. 804, [email protected], [email protected].
Mar 10, 2020 | Consumer Protection, Employment & Technology Archive
CFPB Files Suit Against Fifth Third Bank, National Association for Allegedly Opening Unauthorized Accounts and Enrolling Consumers in Unauthorized Products and Services
Kehoe Law Firm, P.C. is making consumers aware that on March 9, 2020, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”) announced that it filed a lawsuit in United States District Court against Fifth Third Bank, National Association (“Fifth Third Bank” or “Fifth Third”). In its complaint, the CFPB alleges that for several years Fifth Third Bank, without consumers’ knowledge or consent: opened deposit and credit-card accounts in consumers’ names; transferred funds from consumers’ existing accounts to new, improperly opened accounts; enrolled consumers in unauthorized online-banking services; and activated unauthorized lines of credit on consumers’ accounts. Allegedly, Fifth Third Bank violated the Consumer Financial Protection Act’s prohibition against unfair and abusive acts or practices as well as the Truth in Lending Act and the Truth in Savings Act and their implementing regulations.
Allegedly, according to the CFPB, for years and continuing through at least 2016, Fifth Third Bank used a “cross-sell” strategy to increase the number of products and services it provided to existing customers; used an incentive-compensation program to reward selling new products; and conditioned employee-performance ratings and, in some instances, continued employment on meeting ambitious sales goals. The CFPB further alleges that, despite knowing since at least 2008 that employees were opening unauthorized consumer-financial accounts, Fifth Third Bank took insufficient steps to detect and stop the conduct and to identify and remediate harmed consumers.
According to the CFPB, reasonable sales goals and performance incentives are not inherently harmful, but when such programs are not carefully and properly implemented and monitored, as the CFPB alleges, they may create incentives for employees to engage in misconduct in order to meet goals or earn additional compensation.
The CFPB is seeking an injunction to stop Fifth Third Bank’s unlawful conduct, redress for affected consumers, and the imposition of a civil money penalty.
Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection v. Fifth Third Bank, National Association
According to the CFPB’s Complaint, filed on March 9, 2020 in United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, Fifth Third Bank, allegedly, in regards to deposit accounts:
. . . imposed aggressive sales goals for its employees to open new deposit accounts, and its incentive-compensation program rewarded employees for opening new deposit accounts funded with a specified minimum balance within a defined period.
From at least 2010 through at least 2016, Fifth Third opened deposit accounts for existing Fifth Third customers without the customers’ knowledge or consent.
Some of these unauthorized accounts were “funded” when a banker transferred funds to the unauthorized account from the same consumer’s authorized account without the consumer’s knowledge or consent. Often, once an unauthorized account was “funded,” such that it qualified under the sales-goal tracking or incentive program, the banker transferred the funds back to the consumer’s authorized account, again without the consumer’s knowledge or consent.
Opening deposit accounts without consumers’ knowledge or consent and moving consumers’ funds without their knowledge or consent exposed consumers to risks of harm, including that they would be unable to meet their financial obligations, would incur fees, or would experience negative effects on their consumer-reporting-agency information.
Fifth Third charged unjustified fees to many consumers who had deposit accounts opened without their knowledge or consent and whose funds were transferred from their existing accounts to their new, improperly opened accounts.
The CFPB’s complaint alleges in regards to credit cards that
Fifth Third imposed aggressive sales goals for its employees to sell credit cards to consumers, and its incentive-compensation program rewarded employees for selling new credit cards.
From at least 2008 through at least 2016, Fifth Third issued credit cards to existing customers without their knowledge or consent.
By 2009, at the latest, Fifth Third noticed a spike in unauthorized credit cards being issued to consumers.
Despite recognizing the increasing number of unauthorized credit cards, Fifth Third continued to emphasize sales and to maintain credit-card sales goals and incentive compensation.
Issuing credit cards without consumers’ knowledge or consent exposed consumers to risks of harm, including unjustified fees for the unauthorized credit cards and negative effects on their consumer-reporting-agency information. Fifth Third charged many of these consumers unjustified fees.
In regards to enrollment in online banking, the CFPB’s complaint alleges that
Fifth Third imposed aggressive sales goals for its employees to enroll consumers in its online-banking services, and its incentive-compensation program rewarded employees for enrolling consumers in those services.
From at least 2010 through at least 2016, Fifth Third enrolled consumers in online-banking services without their knowledge or consent.
Fifth Third’s enrollment of consumers in online-banking services without their knowledge or consent exposed consumers to the risk of harm, including increased risk of data theft, money theft, and improper personal-data use.
Regarding opening of early access, the CFPB’s complaint alleges that
[e]arly Access is a fee-based line of credit that allows Fifth Third’s deposit-account holders to withdraw funds from their deposit accounts before the funds have been deposited in the accounts. Fifth Third imposed aggressive sales goals for its employees to sell Early Access to consumers, and its incentive-compensation program rewarded employees for enrolling consumers in “fee-based products,” including Early Access.
Fifth Third opened Early Access lines of credit on consumers’ deposit accounts without their knowledge or consent. Fifth Third was aware of this by June 2010, when senior management was notified of an increase in the number of calls by employees to the internal whistleblower hotline regarding the unauthorized opening of Early Access lines of credit.
Fifth Third opened unauthorized Early Access lines of credit from at least 2010 through 2014, and Fifth Third retained unauthorized Early Access lines of credit even after it stopped offering new Early Access lines of credit.
Fifth Third’s opening and retention of these unauthorized lines of credit risked harm to consumers, including to their consumer-reporting-agency information.
Source: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Consumerfinance.gov
Mar 9, 2020 | Consumer Protection, Employment & Technology Archive
BoostMyScore.net, A Credit Repair Company, Settles Charges It Deceived Consumers By Telling Consumers “Piggybacking” on Others’ Credit Could Boost Scores
Kehoe Law Firm, P.C. is making consumers aware that on March 9, 2020, the FTC announced that a Colorado-based credit repair company, BoostMyScore.net, and its owner have agreed to settle FTC charges they mislead consumers with promises to “drastically and immediately” improve credit scores and increase access to lower rates on mortgages.
In its complaint against the operators of BoostMyScore.net (“BMS”), the FTC alleged that the defendants guaranteed consumers that, in exchange for fees ranging from $325 to $4,000, they could “piggyback” on unrelated consumers’ good credit, artificially inflating their own credit score in the process.
In piggybacking, according to the FTC, a consumer pays to be listed on another person’s well-maintained credit account, ostensibly receiving the benefit of the good account on their own credit even though they cannot access the account. In this case, allegedly, the defendants charged struggling consumers steep, illegal fees and made unsupported promises about how piggybacking would pave the way to new credit, including mortgages and other loan products.
According to the FTC’s complaint, BMS made unwarranted promises in various advertisements that consumers’ credit scores would increase by anywhere from 100 to 120 points over two to six weeks. Allegedly, BMS also charged consumers upfront for the credit repair services they offered, which is illegal under the Credit Repair Organizations Act (“CROA”). The complaint alleges that the defendants violated the FTC Act, CROA, and the Telemarketing Sales Rule (“TSR”).
Under the terms of the proposed settlement with the FTC that will be filed with the court, BoostMyScore, LLC, BMS, Inc., and William O. Airy will be prohibited from selling fake access to another consumer’s credit as an authorized user and from collecting advance fees for credit repair services, as well as other violations of CROA. They will also be prohibited from misrepresenting a product or service as being legal, as well as from misrepresenting the terms of a refund or return policy. The defendants also will be banned from further violations of the TSR. The settlement also includes a monetary judgment of $6,630,678, which will be partially suspended upon payment of $64,863 due to the defendants’ inability to pay. Should the defendants be found to have misrepresented their financial condition, the full judgment would be immediately payable.
Source: Federal Trade Commision, FTC.gov
Mar 9, 2020 | Consumer Protection, Employment & Technology Archive
Kehoe Law Firm, P.C. is making consumers aware of the following Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) class action lawsuit filing:
Mike Bloomberg 2020, Inc. (“Mike Bloomberg 2020”)
Class action lawsuit filed on March 6, 2020 against Mike Bloomberg 2020, Inc. and other defendants, as of yet unknown, in United States District Court, Central District of California, “to stop [Mike Bloomberg 2020’s and the other Defendants’ alleged] practice of sending text messages using an ‘automatic telephone dialing system’ . . . to the cellular telephones of consumers nationwide without their prior express written consent; (2) enjoin [Mike Bloomberg 2020 and the other defendants] from continuing to send autodialed text messages to consumers who did not provide their prior express written consent to receive them; and (3) obtain redress for all persons injured by [Defendants’] conduct.”
According to the complaint, “[b]eginning in 2020, [Mike Bloomberg 2020 and the other defendants, as of yet unknown], . . . individually or jointly, directly or indirectly, [allegedly] sent multiple, unsolicited, non-emergency text messages to the cell phones of [Plaintiffs] and other telephone consumers throughout California and the United States promoting the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Rubens Bloomberg, and they did so with full knowledge as to the lack of requisite consent that [Defendants] knew was necessary for their messages to have been lawfully texted to consumers in the manner in which they were.”
The Plaintiffs also, allegedly, “never consented in writing, or otherwise, to receive autodialed text messages . . . relating to Mr. Bloomberg’s . . . candidacy,” and the Plaintiffs “did not have a pre-existing relationship with [Defendants], and never gave their prior consent to receiving . . . text messages on their cellular telephones soliciting them to support Mr. Bloomberg or contribute to his campaign.”
Do You Believe You Are a Victim of Illegal Robocalls, Text Messages, “Junk” Faxes or Telemarketing Sales Calls?
If you have received illegal robocalls, text messages, “junk” faxes or telemarketing sales calls, you may be able to recover at least $500 for each illegal call, text or fax you received and, possibly, as much as $1,500 for each illegal call, text message or facsimile that was made either willfully or knowingly in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.
To help evaluate your potential legal claims under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, please complete KLF’s confidential Robocall Questionnaire or, if you prefer to speak with an attorney, please complete the form above on the right, e-mail [email protected] or contact Michael Yarnoff, Esq., [email protected], (215) 792-6676, Ext. 804, for a free, no-obligation evaluation of your potential legal rights.
Mar 8, 2020 | Consumer Protection, Employment & Technology Archive
Zynga Discovers Data Breach Related to Unauthorized Access to Player Account Information
Zynga’s “Player Security Announcement”
In September 2019, Zynga posted a “Player Security Announcement” which disclosed that “[Zynga] recently discovered that certain player account information may have been illegally accessed by outside hackers.” Zynga reported that “[w]hile the investigation is ongoing, [Zynga does] not believe any financial information was accessed. However, [Zynga has] identified account login information for certain players of Draw Something and Words With Friends that may have been accessed.”
Reported Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Zynga
PocketGamer.biz reported (“Zynga struck with lawsuit regarding Words with Friends data breach“) that
US games developer Zynga has been struck with a class action lawsuit in California regarding the company’s data breach in 2019.
As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the studio is facing a court case surrounding stolen player information across Words with Friends and Draw Something users.
. . .
In September last year, the company revealed player account information had been accessed via a cyber-attack. While no financial data was believed to have been accessed, the hackers did obtain entry to an estimated 173 million usernames and passwords.
Zynga, Inc.’s Alleged Failure to Reasonably Safeguard Personally Identifiable Information
On March 3, 2020, a class action complaint was filed against Zynga, Inc. in United States District Court for Zynga’s alleged “failure to reasonably safeguard Plaintiffs’ Personally Identifiable Information (‘PII’) . . . failure to reasonably provide timely notification that Plaintiffs’ PII had been accessed and acquired by an unauthorized third party through a data breach, and for intentionally and unconscionably deceiving Plaintiffs relating to the status, safety, location, access, and protection of Plaintiffs’ PII.”
The class action complaint stated that
[i]n September 2019, hacker Gnosticplayers (‘Hacker’) told . . . The Hacker News that he breached Zynga’s user database, gaining access to more than 218 million user accounts.[]
The Hacker said that the stolen information included names, email addresses, login IDs, password reset tokens, Facebook IDs, Zynga account IDs, and passwords secured with SHA-1 cryptography, an encryption method that ‘has been considered outdated and insecure since before Zynga was even founded.[]
According to reports, the data breach is known to have included at least the following Zynga games: Words With Friend; Draw Something; and OMGPOP. [Emphasis added.]
On September 12, 2019, Zynga, according to the class action complaint,
posted a ‘Player Security Announcement’ on its website stating that it “recently discovered that certain player account information may have been illegally accessed by outside hackers.[]
Rather than taking responsibility for its cybersecurity shortcomings, Zynga’s Player Security Announcement implied that data breaches are impossible to avoid. The first sentence of the Player Security Announcement says that ‘Cyber attacks are one of the unfortunate realities of doing business today.’
Zynga did not, and has not to this day, issued an email notification of the breach to its users. Rather, Zynga effectively hid the fact that it suffered a data breach. Only those users who happened to visit Zynga’s website on their own volition, read about the breach in the news, or had signed up to receive email data breach notifications from independent third parties that monitor data breaches were made aware of the breach.
Zynga had the ability to send an email notification to all users because providing an email address appears to be a universal requirement Zynga imposes on all users when going through the registration process.
Rather than sending an email to all users at the time of the breach, Zynga spent its time shoring up its legal defenses.
Some Zynga users first learned of the breach through receipt of an email alert from the website ‘Have I Been Pwned,’ which allows users to sign up for notifications when their [Personally Identifiable Information] is included in a data breach. That alert was not sent until December 18, 2019. The unfortunate reality is that most Zynga users are still completely unaware that their PII was stolen as a result of the Zynga data breach, because Zynga failed to reasonably advise them.
Further, according to the class action complaint, “[t]he information stolen from Zynga included names, phone numbers, usernames, email addresses, and passwords-PII that is highly valued among cyber thieves and criminals on the Dark Web.” Additionally, the complaint states that “. . . the Hacker obtained over 200 million passwords, including more than 7 million passwords that Zynga had stored in clear text, as a result of the data breach.” [Emphasis added.]
Have You Been Impacted by A Data Breach?
If so, please either contact Kehoe Law Firm, P.C. Partner Michael Yarnoff, Esq., (215) 792-6676, Ext. 804, [email protected], complete the form on the right or send an e-mail to [email protected] for a free, no-obligation case evaluation of your facts to determine whether your privacy rights have been violated and whether there is a basis for a data privacy class action.
Examples of the type of relief sought by data privacy class actions, include, but are not limited to, reimbursement of identity theft losses and of out-of-pocket costs paid by data breach victims for protective measures such as credit monitoring services, credit reports, and credit freezes; compensation for time spent responding to the breach; imposition of credit monitoring services and identity theft insurance, paid for by the defendant company; and improvements to the defendant company’s data security systems.
Data privacy class actions are brought on a contingent-fee basis; thus, plaintiffs and the class members do not pay out-of-pocket attorney’s fees or litigation costs. Subject to court approval, attorney’s fees and litigation costs are derived from the recovery obtained for the class.
