The System That Was Built to Stop This — And Didn’t

To understand what BlueSnap did, you need to understand the system it was supposed to uphold. Payment facilitators like BlueSnap sit between merchants and the banks that process card transactions. They are the gatekeepers. Card networks gave them specific rules, specific responsibilities, and specific tools to keep fraudsters out. BlueSnap knew all of this. It agreed to all of it in writing.

• BlueSnap is a registered payment facilitator operating in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia. It advertises itself as an “all-in-one payment orchestration platform” that provides “expedited onboarding” to help businesses start accepting card payments quickly — worldwide.
• As a payment facilitator, BlueSnap operates under its own master merchant account and runs sub-merchants beneath it. If a sub-merchant cannot cover refunds from chargebacks, BlueSnap is on the hook for the money — meaning it has a direct financial incentive to police who it boards.
• Visa and Mastercard rules require BlueSnap to conduct full due diligence before onboarding any merchant: verify the business is legitimate, check for prior terminations via the MATCH database (Mastercard’s blacklist for terminated merchants), review websites for deceptive practices, and for telemarketers, review the actual call scripts.
• After onboarding, BlueSnap is required by its contract with payment processor Fiserv (formerly First Data) to monitor merchants continuously at “the highest industry standards” and immediately notify Fiserv of any non-compliance or potential fraud.
• The card networks run formal fraud monitoring programs — Visa’s Visa Fraud Monitoring Program (VFMP) and Visa Dispute Monitoring Program (VDMP) — that place merchants on watchlists when their fraud or chargeback rates exceed 0.9%. Merchants who stay on these programs too long face escalating fines and eventual permanent disqualification from the card network.
• BlueSnap charges higher fees for high-risk merchants and extra fees for each chargeback. Under its own “Excessive Chargeback Monitoring Program,” merchants with chargeback rates above 0.65% can be charged up to $135 per chargeback. In other words, fraud was a revenue source — not just a problem to eliminate.

ACRO Services: The Debt Relief Scam That Stole Millions From People Already Broke

From roughly 2016 to 2022, a telemarketing operation running under the name ACRO Services and a rotating roster of aliases called up people in debt and made them a promise: pay us thousands of dollars up front, and we will eliminate your credit card debt in 12 to 18 months. The promise was a lie from the first word.

• The principals behind the scam were Sean Austin, John Steven Huffman, and John Preston Thompson. They operated under at least eight business names, including American Consumer Rights Organization, Music City Ventures (DBA Tri Star Consumer Group), Thacker & Associates Int’l LLC, Nashville Tennessee Ventures, First Call Processing LLC, and Consumer Protection Resources LLC.
• ACRO’s telemarketers told consumers their credit card debt was “invalid” under federal law, that the card companies had overcharged them, or that they qualified for a “debt forgiveness program.” These claims were fabricated. None of them had legal basis.
• ACRO charged upfront fees of thousands of dollars per consumer, often maxing out a consumer’s credit card. They told consumers to stop paying their cards and stop communicating with their banks — advice that guaranteed the consumer’s credit would be destroyed whether or not ACRO delivered.
• ACRO even told consumers that its own fees would be included in the “eliminated” debt — meaning consumers were told they would ultimately pay nothing. In reality, consumers paid thousands and received nothing. Their credit was ruined, their card balances remained, and many were sued by their credit card companies.
• ACRO frequently claimed to be affiliated with a bank, credit card company, or credit reporting agency to appear legitimate. One lawsuit documents a consumer being told ACRO’s telemarketers were calling from her credit card company.
• BlueSnap processed over $45 million in consumer payments for ACRO across three merchant accounts — Thacker (MID 1090909), Nashville Ventures (MID 1122444), and First Call Processing (MID 1253610) — between 2016 and 2021.

Every Red Flag They Saw and Buried

The FTC’s complaint is a chronological record of willful blindness. BlueSnap and its executives did not miss these warnings. They received them, acknowledged them, and chose profit instead.

• 2016 (Thacker account opened): BlueSnap onboards the first ACRO entity, Thacker & Associates, and begins processing debt relief payments. This account will remain active for five years despite continuous fraud indicators.
• 2017–2020 (multiple lawsuits filed, publicly visible): Multiple consumer lawsuits against ACRO-affiliated entities were filed and were public record. BlueSnap’s own policy required ongoing internet searches for lawsuits against high-risk merchants. The complaints included allegations of unsolicited debt relief calls, fraud, and deceptive timeshare cancellation scams — all naming entities and principals BlueSnap was actively paying out.
• February 2018 (Nashville Ventures account opened): BlueSnap’s own underwriting search for “Nashville Ventures” returned pages of consumer complaints on Ripoff Report calling the company a scam. BlueSnap included those complaints in the underwriting file and opened the account anyway.
• December 2019: Fiserv emails Monteith directly about “BlueSnap Problem Merchants,” naming the ACRO Services account with a chargeback rate of 30.21% over the prior 30 days — more than 30 times the threshold that triggers fraud monitoring. BlueSnap continues processing.
• January 2020: ACRO’s chargeback rate climbs to 33%. When Fiserv asks about it, BlueSnap responds that it is “working directly with this merchant on a chargeback reduction plan.” The plan does not work. The account is not terminated.
• March 2020: Visa places the Thacker account on the VFMP due to a fraud-to-sales ratio of 17.24% in a single month, representing $88,246 in fraudulent transactions. Fiserv emails Monteith and BlueSnap staff demanding action on multiple high-chargeback merchants and stating some must be terminated by month-end. ACRO is not terminated.
• June 2020 – March 2021: Monteith personally reviews and signs at least five VFMP remediation plans filed on behalf of ACRO Services, falsely marking the account as not a “High-Brand Risk MCC” even though she checked boxes for “Outbound Telemarketing” in the same plans.
• February 2021: American Express emails Monteith four separate times about the Thacker account, stating each time that “multiple Cardholders are stating this merchant scammed them” and that 11% of all approved charges have been claimed as fraud since September 2020. American Express demands cancellation “within 48 hours” each time. BlueSnap does not stop processing American Express transactions on the account for nearly a month.
• March 31, 2021: A fraud investigator from Synchrony Bank makes an unannounced visit to ACRO’s Nashville headquarters to investigate millions in disputed charges. The ACRO owners tell BlueSnap’s Director of Fraud Strategy about the visit and admit they lied to the investigator. The Director emails Monteith and Dangelmaier describing consumers being instructed to charge $10,000 onto cards for ACRO’s fee and then never pay the bank back, forcing charge-offs or bankruptcy. He also describes recordings of ACRO telemarketers deliberately speaking fast to confuse senior citizens, including one who did not authorize the charge.
• April 2021: Visa imposes a $75,000 fine on the acquiring bank (Santander) due to excessive fraud on the Thacker account. Fiserv notifies BlueSnap it is responsible for the fine. BlueSnap still does not terminate the account.
• April–May 2021: Dangelmaier personally coaches ACRO owners on how to continue processing under a new shell company with a different owner’s name and instructs employees to classify the new account as “education services.”
• May–June 2021 (First Call Processing account): The shell company account is opened, processes over $3.1 million in less than 30 days, accumulates $130,000 in chargebacks and $160,000 in refunds. Fiserv demands same-day closure. Monteith initially resists before acquiescing.
• July 2021: Fiserv finally forces BlueSnap to stop processing on all remaining ACRO accounts. BlueSnap stops only because it is compelled to.

The Shell Company Playbook: How Dangelmaier and Monteith Helped ACRO Hide

BlueSnap’s conduct went beyond negligence. Dangelmaier and Monteith took active, specific steps to help ACRO Services evade the fraud controls that the payment system depends on. This is credit card laundering — and the executives at the top designed it.

• In April and May 2021, with the Thacker account on the brink of forced termination, Dangelmaier personally called the ACRO owners and instructed them to apply for a new merchant account under a different business name and a different owner’s name, so they could continue processing if the old accounts were shut down.
• Dangelmaier directed BlueSnap employees — including Monteith — to classify the new account as an “education” service rather than debt relief, to avoid the heightened scrutiny applied to debt-related businesses. The ACRO owners duly applied for “First Call Processing LLC,” describing its business as “Consumer Protection Resources” and listing the category as “Education.”
• The shell company was not a new business. It was formed less than a month before its merchant application. Its “client agreement” referenced a company called Consumer Protection Resources which had also been incorporated just weeks earlier. The agreement told consumers that “our program has saved our clients thousands over the years” — a claim that was factually impossible given the company had just been created.
• Both Dangelmaier and Monteith explicitly instructed BlueSnap employees that no documentation should connect First Call Processing to the other ACRO merchant accounts. This was a deliberate effort to conceal the shell company’s connection to accounts already under investigation and facing termination.
• BlueSnap assigned First Call Processing MCC 8299 (“Schools and Educational Services – Not Elsewhere Classified”), a generic non-high-risk code, despite knowing the business was processing debt relief payments for the same principals who ran the Thacker and Nashville Ventures scam accounts.
• When the First Call Processing account generated massive chargebacks within its first month, BlueSnap’s Director of Fraud Strategy told Monteith: “These guys are really sketchy… they are for sure not operating a legit business.” Monteith’s response was to ask the Director to call ACRO’s CEO and remind him “how careful he has to be. No mistakes.”
• After Fiserv forced the First Call Processing account to close, Dangelmaier and Monteith immediately directed ACRO to resume processing on the Nashville Ventures account — an account still under BlueSnap’s control — and coordinated a plan to move volume gradually to avoid drawing fresh scrutiny.
• In a recorded call after the First Call Processing shutdown, Dangelmaier told the ACRO owners: “Yep, you’re 100 percent fine over there” — referring to their remaining accounts. He also coached them on how to avoid being placed on the MATCH list, calling it “a disaster” and “like a criminal record almost,” and told them to issue fast refunds to any complaining consumer before they could file a chargeback.

The Code Swap: How BlueSnap Hid ACRO’s True Risk Category

Merchant category codes (MCCs) are four-digit codes that determine how a merchant is classified for risk monitoring purposes. The wrong code means less scrutiny, lower fines, and more time to keep processing. BlueSnap deliberately assigned the wrong codes to every single ACRO account.

• ACRO Services was an outbound telemarketing operation by any definition. Card network rules required that telemarketing merchants be assigned MCC 5966 — Direct Marketing, Outbound Telemarketing Merchants. Visa rules state this MCC must be used whenever a merchant “initiates contact with prospective buyers via telephone.” ACRO’s entire business model was cold-calling people.
• Visa classifies all merchants under MCC 5966 as “high-brand risk” — requiring registration with Visa, monthly activity reports, and accelerated fine timelines if placed on a fraud monitoring program. Under the High-Risk VFMP timeline, fines begin in Month 1. Under the standard timeline, significant fines are delayed until Month 12.
• Instead of assigning MCC 5966, BlueSnap assigned three different generic “not elsewhere classified” catch-all codes: MCC 7399 (Business Services, Thacker account), MCC 7299 (Other Services, Nashville Ventures), and MCC 8299 (Schools and Educational Services, First Call Processing). None of these are classified as high-risk by card networks.
• The result was direct and concrete: when the Thacker account was placed on the VFMP in March 2020, Visa put it on the Standard timeline instead of the High-Risk timeline, because the account showed a non-high-risk MCC. Under the High-Risk timeline, BlueSnap would have faced immediate and escalating fines. Under the Standard timeline, the account ran for 12 months before a significant fine was imposed.
• Monteith personally perpetuated this misclassification. In at least five VFMP remediation plans she signed between June 2020 and January 2021, she checked “No” next to the field “High-Brand Risk MCC” — while simultaneously checking “Outbound Telemarketing” as the business model. The contradiction is documented in the same forms she signed.
• Fiserv repeatedly told BlueSnap that merchants with high-risk MCCs must be placed on the High-Risk VFMP timeline. BlueSnap took no action to correct the MCC for any ACRO account.

The Non-Financial Ledger

The complaint describes phone recordings. One of them captures an ACRO telemarketer speaking deliberately fast to a senior citizen who could not keep up. The person on the other end of that call did not give authorization. They never agreed to the charge. They just could not follow what was being said quickly enough to stop it. Someone at BlueSnap listened to that recording and wrote an email to the company’s two top executives about it. The executives told their employee that ACRO was an important client.

There are people behind every one of the $45 million processed through those three accounts. The Better Business Bureau complaints tell some of their stories. One person wrote that ACRO “ruin my credit, when they were suppose to fix it.” That person paid for a service that did not exist, then watched their credit score fall, then could not qualify for a loan or a lease or a phone plan. Another person wrote about being “bombarded with heavy telemarketing” and very reluctantly signing up. They paid $8,050. They could not reach anyone afterward. They wrote about the stress of trying to get their money back.

Another consumer paid $2,930 for “credit coaching.” They were told not to let their creditors know they were working with ACRO. Their creditors found out anyway, because ACRO did nothing. The $2,930 charge — for something they “never needed or understood what it was really for” — is now the only thing on their credit report.

These consumers were not rich people who lost a little money. The scam targeted people who were already in credit card debt, people desperate enough to believe that a company cold-calling them had a government-approved program to eliminate what they owed. ACRO’s telemarketers knew exactly what lie would land. They told consumers to stop paying their cards — which meant the moment a consumer followed ACRO’s instructions, the damage started accumulating whether or not the program worked. By the time consumers realized ACRO had done nothing, they had ruined credit, outstanding balances that had grown due to missed payments, and in many cases, lawsuits from their card companies. They were in worse shape than before the call.

Synchrony Bank sent an investigator to ACRO’s offices because so many of its cardholders had been hit. A bank dispatching an investigator to a specific address means hundreds of its customers were affected enough that the bank’s risk exposure demanded a physical visit. BlueSnap’s Fraud Director told the two people at the top of BlueSnap about this visit. He described an operation telling consumers to run up their cards and then default on purpose. He described a business model built entirely around extracting money from people who were financially desperate. Dangelmaier and Monteith said ACRO was an important client and they needed to keep working with them.

The people who were defrauded by ACRO will not all be counted in whatever judgment comes out of this case. Some of them do not know they have a case. Some of them are too embarrassed to report it. Some of them already gave up. What they share is the experience of being targeted at a moment of financial vulnerability, promised a way out, and left worse off. The payment infrastructure that made those charges possible ran through BlueSnap. The executives who kept that infrastructure running, despite every warning, are named defendants in a federal lawsuit.

In Their Own Words: What the Documents Actually Say

The following are direct quotes from the FTC’s complaint filed May 1, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. No paraphrase. No editorializing. Their words.

“In an email about ‘BlueSnap-Problem Merchants’ dated December 10, 2019, a Fiserv official told Monteith: ‘I have been notified by the Credit/Risk Team the below merchants under BlueSnap Single-MID have been flagged for poor processing and should look[] to be closed.’ The chargeback rate for the ACRO Services account was listed as 30.21% over the past 30 days—more than thirty times the threshold required to trigger chargeback monitoring programs.” FTC Complaint, ¶66 — December 10, 2019 Fiserv communication to Monteith

“The Director [of Fraud Strategy] then sent an email to Monteith and Dangelmaier warning them about ‘multiple indicators and flags’ that ACRO Services could ‘get shut down for illegal activity.’ In the email, the Fraud Director explained… that Synchrony Bank ‘wanted documents related to multiple customers that were recently told by TriStar to charge $10K onto their credit cards for the AcrosServices [sic] fee, then were instructed to never pay the credit card back so the bank is forced to close it and write it off as a loss, or have the customer include it in a bankruptcy.’ He further reported that he had listened to customer call recordings with ACRO Services, where he ‘heard them purposely speak fast and make it confusing for senior citizens, one of which did not give his authorization to make the purchase.'” FTC Complaint, ¶79 — March 31, 2021 internal email from BlueSnap’s Director of Fraud Strategy to Monteith and Dangelmaier

“After this email, Dangelmaier and Monteith both told the Director of Fraud Strategy that ACRO Services was an important client for the company and they needed to work closely with them so they could continue processing.” FTC Complaint, ¶80 — Response by Dangelmaier and Monteith after receiving fraud report

“Dangelmaier told the ACRO owners to immediately issue refunds to consumers who complain so that they would not initiate chargebacks, because otherwise their chargeback thresholds would be too high and they would be shut down due to fraud.” FTC Complaint, ¶109 — June 23, 2021 call between Dangelmaier and ACRO owners

“Fiserv confirmed through chargeback documentation that customers were supposed to receive debt consolidation and credit repair services which are unqualified [i.e., prohibited business categories]. ‘The overall consumer harm impact that this merchant has on its customers poses great risk to us for processing these sales and we need to stop any further processing immediately.'” FTC Complaint, ¶104 — June 18, 2021 Fiserv email to Monteith regarding First Call Processing

“Monteith told the employee that she ‘decided we are ok with reserves just have to watch carefully. If they don’t start processing as planned I will be concerned… Our other risk is that if [D]iscover has a program like [M]atch and Preston gets on it then we will have an issue with Nashville [Ventures].'” FTC Complaint, ¶101 — May 23, 2021 internal email from Monteith

Who Pays When the Payment System Fails

Public Health

Financial fraud and financial stress produce documented, measurable harm to physical and mental health. This case is not abstract.

• The complaint documents ACRO specifically targeting people in credit card debt — people already experiencing financial stress, which is a primary driver of anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, and cardiovascular disease. The scam deepened that stress rather than relieving it.
• BlueSnap’s own fraud team documented ACRO telemarketers targeting senior citizens — a population with elevated vulnerability to financial fraud, for whom financial losses are not recoverable through future earnings and whose cognitive stress from financial betrayal is documented to accelerate decline.
• Consumers were instructed to stop communicating with their credit card companies. This meant that by the time victims realized the program was a fraud, they had missed months of payments, accrued late fees and interest, and faced collections calls and legal action from the creditors they had been told to ignore — a compounding psychological stress load that the FTC’s complaint describes as leaving consumers “worse off.”
• One consumer in the BBB complaint record described the experience as “a horror show ever since” and another described being “forced to have more stress.” These are not hyperbolic reactions; they are the documented psychological signature of financial betrayal, which research consistently links to worsening physical health outcomes.

Economic Inequality

This scam did not target wealthy people with extra money to spare. It was designed from the ground up to extract wealth from people who were already economically vulnerable — and BlueSnap’s fee structure meant the company profited more from the fraud’s scale, not less.

• ACRO’s business model required consumers to already be in credit card debt to have a target audience. The pitch — “we can eliminate your debt” — only works on people who are desperate enough to believe it. The complaint confirms ACRO charged upfront fees of thousands of dollars per consumer, often charging cards up to their credit limits. For someone already at their credit limit, this charge was financially catastrophic.
• The scam’s instruction to consumers to stop paying their cards and stop communicating with issuers meant consumers sacrificed their credit scores as part of the program. A destroyed credit score has compounding economic effects: inability to qualify for housing, inability to access lower-interest borrowing, ineligibility for certain jobs. The harm extended far beyond the initial fee payment.
• BlueSnap’s fee structure created a direct financial incentive to keep high-chargeback merchants processing. Under its own “Excessive Chargeback Monitoring Program,” BlueSnap charged merchants up to $135 per chargeback — meaning the more consumers tried to fight back through disputes, the more money BlueSnap made. Every dollar a consumer fought for cost them a fee that enriched BlueSnap.
• The $45 million processed through ACRO accounts by BlueSnap represents money extracted primarily from economically distressed households. Unlike white-collar fraud that redistributes money among wealthy parties, this scheme moved money from financially desperate people to payment processing profits and the personal enrichment of ACRO’s principals.
• The complaint also references a second merchant — Powerline Group — whose owner agreed to pay over $400,000 to the New York Attorney General for illegally advertising stalkerware. Stalkerware is software used to secretly track people’s phones, most commonly deployed in domestic abuse and intimate partner surveillance situations. BlueSnap processed for this merchant too, despite a 6.39% chargeback rate flagged by Fiserv in December 2019 in the same email that flagged ACRO.
• By refusing to terminate fraudulent merchants until forced by third parties, BlueSnap extended the operational window for multiple scams. Every week of additional processing meant additional consumer victims. The complaint is explicit: “If Defendants had not concealed this fraudulent activity and turned a blind eye to repeated evidence of fraud, ACRO Services and other scammers would not have been able to process tens of millions of dollars in consumer payments.”

The Cost of a Life Metric

What Now: Who to Watch, Who to Pressure, What to Do

The FTC lawsuit was filed on May 1, 2024. The case is active. The named defendants — the company and both executives — are in the system. Here is how to stay informed and what to do if this affected you or someone you know.

Named Defendants

• Ralph Dangelmaier, CEO of BlueSnap from 2013 through 2023; currently listed as an advisor to BlueSnap. Personally directed shell company creation, MCC misclassification, and chargeback suppression coaching.
• Terry Monteith, Senior Vice President, Global Acquiring and Payments, BlueSnap. Oversaw BlueSnap’s fraud prevention team, personally signed fraudulent VFMP remediation plans, personally received American Express’s four closure demands, and initially resisted Fiserv’s shutdown order.
• BlueSnap, Inc., California corporation, 800 South Street, Suite 640, Waltham, Massachusetts 02453. Currently operating as a payment facilitator in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia.
• BlueSnap Payment Services Ltd, wholly owned UK subsidiary, 2 Sheraton St. Medius House, London W1F 8BH. Both entities are named defendants.

Regulatory Watchlist

• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Primary plaintiff in this case. You can file a consumer complaint at reportfraud.ftc.gov. If you were victimized by ACRO Services or any of its aliases (American Consumer Rights Organization, Reliance Solutions, TriStar Consumer Group, Consumer Protection Resources), file a report and reference Case No. 1:24-cv-01898-MHC.
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): Has jurisdiction over consumer financial products and payment practices. File complaints at consumerfinance.gov/complaint for any unauthorized charges processed through BlueSnap.
• State Attorneys General: New York’s AG already took action against a separate BlueSnap merchant over stalkerware advertising. Your state AG may have jurisdiction if you were victimized in their state. Check your state AG’s consumer protection division.
• Visa and Mastercard compliance reporting: Both networks have merchant dispute and compliance reporting mechanisms. If you were charged by a merchant account with a “BLS*” or “BLN*” prefix on your statement, that transaction was facilitated by BlueSnap.
• CFPB’s Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity: Debt relief scams disproportionately impact economically distressed communities. Systematic targeting of vulnerable populations may implicate fair lending frameworks.

Mutual Aid and Grassroots Action

• If you or someone you know paid ACRO Services or any alias (American Consumer Rights Organization, Tri Star Consumer Group, Reliance Solutions, Consumer Protection Resources, Help4Timeshare Owners): Contact the FTC at 1-877-FTC-HELP. Save all receipts, card statements, and any written or recorded communication with the company. You may be eligible for restitution from the permanent injunction already entered against the ACRO owners.
• Credit repair after fraud: If ACRO’s instructions to stop paying cards damaged your credit, file a dispute with all three credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) documenting the fraud. The FTC has free dispute letter templates at consumer.ftc.gov.
• Organize in your community: Debt relief scams target people who cannot easily access financial literacy resources. Local mutual aid networks, credit unions, and community legal clinics can help people identify scam calls before they cost thousands. Share this story.
• Demand payment processor accountability: BlueSnap is still operating. Contact your own payment processors and financial institutions and ask them directly: what is their policy for terminating merchants flagged for fraud? How long does a merchant stay active after a fraud monitoring program placement? These are answerable questions and companies are accountable when customers ask them.
• Watch the docket: Case No. 1:24-cv-01898-MHC, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division. Public court filings are available through PACER (pacer.uscourts.gov). Settlements and consent orders in FTC cases must be published for public comment before they are finalized — your comment matters.