The Solar Scam That Started It All: How Pink Energy Robbed People at the Door

Pink Energy, officially Power Home Solar, LLC, built a business model around fraudulent solar sales and fraudulent financing. Understanding how that scheme worked is essential to understanding why Experian’s conduct caused such specific, lasting harm.

• Pink Energy sold rooftop solar panel systems primarily through door-to-door and phone sales. The systems were misrepresented as genuine, functional products. The complaint describes them as systems that were “not genuine,” and the company is now subject to a bankruptcy filed October 7, 2022 in the Western District of North Carolina.
• The purchase price for each system was not set by market value. The loans consumers were enrolled in were deliberately inflated: they contained false statements of the amount financed, false principal balances, false interest figures, and false descriptions of the loan’s purpose and type. The complaint states these discrepancies were significant, often substantial percentages off from reality.
• A large portion of the money “financed” in each loan was not going toward any actual solar product. It was made up of unearned financial charges, kickback commissions paid back to Pink Energy, and other components the complaint describes as “facially suspect and fraudulent.”
• Pink Energy and its five lending partners, Sunlight Financial LLC, Dividend Solar Finance LLC, Goodleap LLC (formerly Loanpal), Solar Mosaic Inc., and Cross River Bank acting as a fintech platform for Sunlight, operated as a connected scheme. The lenders knowingly inflated the loans and helped Pink Energy mislead consumers about the actual price of the product.
• The scheme was designed to legally separate the fraud from the loan instruments: the lending partners were positioned to argue they were just lenders, not responsible for the sales fraud, while simultaneously structuring the loans with Pink Energy to maximize extraction from consumers.
• By the time Pink Energy declared bankruptcy in October 2022, thousands of consumers had been locked into loans worth tens of thousands of dollars each for a product that either did not work or did not exist as promised. They were left holding the financial obligation with nowhere to direct it.

“Thousands of consumers like Plaintiffs have become the financial victims of Pink Energy’s unlawful and deceptive sales practices as well as the unlawful scam financial structures and fees within these loans, now being on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in loans for a sham product.”

Experian’s Job Was to Check. It Chose Not To.

The FCRA, passed in 1970, exists because Congress recognized that inaccurate credit reporting was already “the most serious problem in the credit reporting industry.” Experian has had 53 years to build systems that comply with it. The lawsuit describes what Experian actually built instead.

• The FCRA under 15 U.S.C. § 1681e(b) requires credit bureaus to maintain “reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy” of all information in consumer reports. Courts interpreting this law have defined “assure” as “to make sure or certain: put beyond all doubt.” Experian, the complaint alleges, has built no meaningful process to do this.
• Before accepting a company as a reporting subscriber, Experian performs no audit, no review, no examination, and no credibility assessment of the information that subscriber will be submitting. There is no initial vetting step.
• After accepting a subscriber, Experian does not monitor, review, or audit what that subscriber reports. There is no ongoing review process either.
• Experian does not follow any procedure to review publicly available information about a reporting subscriber. A court ruling against that subscriber, a government investigation, widespread news coverage, or a federal regulatory consent order all go untracked.
• The complaint states this directly: even if Experian had known every fact alleged in the lawsuit about Sunlight, Goodleap, and the other Pink Energy lenders, “it still would not have changed anything and would still have continued to blindly parrot its paying customer sources.”
• This is the core of the lawsuit’s willfulness claim: Experian’s failure to investigate is not negligence or oversight. It is a deliberate policy that prioritizes the revenue from subscriber lenders over the accuracy rights of the consumers those lenders report on.
• The CFPB, in its own 2017 supervisory report cited in the complaint, had already documented that credit reporting agencies “lack incentives and under-invest in accuracy.” Experian’s own litigation history makes clear this is a known, unresolved problem it has chosen not to fix.

“Even if Experian had known everything alleged in this Complaint about the subject subscribers, it still would not have changed anything and would still have continued to blindly parrot its paying customer sources.”
— Class Action Complaint, ¶27

The “Credible Sources” Experian Refused to Question

Experian’s legal defense for reporting whatever furnishers tell it rests on the argument that its sources are generally credible financial institutions. The complaint systematically dismantles that argument for every lender involved in the Pink Energy scheme.

• Cross River Bank is described in the complaint as a fintech platform, not a traditional bank. It exists to allow non-bank companies to lend money while using a bank charter to bypass state and federal banking requirements. The complaint explicitly states it has “none of the indicia or structure of a business such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, or other assumed credible financial institutions.”
• In March 2023, the FDIC issued a consent order against Cross River Bank, accepted and stipulated as true by Cross River, finding the bank engaged in “unfair and deceptive practices” in violation of Section 5 of the FTC Act and violated the Federal Consumer Credit Protection Act in multiple ways. This consent order was public and publicly linked. Experian had access to it.
• The FDIC consent order specifically restricted Cross River from allowing non-bank entities to offer credit products through the bank without prior written approval from the Regional Director. The entire Pink Energy lending arrangement was the type of activity the order targeted.
• Sunlight Financial LLC, the entity that reported the Theodores’ fraudulent $64,864 balance, was not financially stable. Sunlight filed for reorganization bankruptcy and then emerged. A lender currently in or recently through bankruptcy is not a self-evidently credible source of accurate debt reporting.
• Goodleap LLC, formerly Loanpal, is similarly described in the complaint as a fintech platform with “none of the indicia or structure” of a traditional credible financial institution. It reported Bilodeau’s fraudulent $85,384 balance and, when asked by Experian to verify it, confirmed its own fraudulent data.
• A federal court ruling cited in the complaint, Losch v. Experian, held directly that there is no legal “presumption” that financial institutions are reliable furnishers. Experian cannot claim it was entitled to trust these entities without conducting any assessment whatsoever. The law does not support that position.
• Cross River and Goodleap, the complaint states, “have been publicly criticized in ways easily knowable by Experian.” Experian’s own policy of ignoring publicly available information about its subscribers meant it never saw what was plainly visible.

What It Actually Means When Your Credit Report Is Destroyed

Wilson and Lashanda Theodore live in Hampton, Virginia. At some point, someone knocked on their door or called their phone and told them they could get a solar panel system for their home. They signed for it. They thought they were making a smart investment. What they got was a fake obligation: a fraudulent loan for a product from a company that was either already collapsing or was designed to collapse, sold by people who knew the loan amounts were inflated beyond any honest relationship to what was being “purchased.”

The Theodores are not shown in this complaint as people who ignored their finances or ran from their obligations. They disputed the account in April 2023. They sent the dispute by Certified Mail, the kind of mail with a physical signature receipt. They attached proof: a joint letter from nine state Attorneys General, signed by the Attorney General of their own state of Virginia, telling the Pink Energy lenders that these loans were fraudulent and should be suspended. They did everything right. They sent the legal equivalent of a signed letter from the top law enforcement officer of their state saying the debt was fraudulent.

Experian received that letter. The complaint states that Experian signed for it. Then Experian’s process kicked in: it turned around, contacted Sunlight, and asked Sunlight whether Sunlight’s own reported data was correct. Sunlight said yes. Experian closed the investigation. The fraudulent $64,864 balance stayed on the Theodores’ credit report.

A credit score is not an abstraction. It is the number that determines whether you can refinance your home when rates fall, whether you can get a car loan after yours breaks down, whether you can rent an apartment if you move, whether a landlord accepts your application or sends you away. It is the number that a lender pulls up in seconds and uses to decide whether your financial history makes you trustworthy. When that number carries a $64,864 past-due balance on a fraudulent “Secured Home Improvement Loan,” the word that comes back from lenders is no.

The complaint notes that the loan was falsely reported as a “Secured Home Improvement Loan,” a category that in the credit industry specifically means the loan is secured by real property: a mortgage-style lien on your house. It was not. But to any lender reading the report, it looked like the Theodores had already encumbered their home. That single false category code told the entire financial world that Wilson and Lashanda Theodore had their house tied up in a debt that was past due by more than sixty thousand dollars.

Steven Bilodeau in Gloucester, Virginia had $85,384 of fraudulent debt on his Experian report. He disputed it in April 2024, also via Certified Mail. Experian signed for it on April 12, 2024. Twenty days later, on May 2, 2024, Experian sent Bilodeau the results of its reinvestigation: Goodleap said the debt was real and past due. The investigation was closed. The fraud stayed.

The complaint also describes a secondary harm that is quieter but just as damaging. Experian has a field in its credit reporting system called the Compliance Condition Code, or CCC. That is the field that signals to all downstream users of a credit report that a consumer is actively disputing an account. When that code is present, many credit scoring models suppress the negative impact of that account on the consumer’s score while the dispute is resolved. Experian, as a blanket policy, refuses to add that code when consumers dispute fraudulent accounts like these. The complaint documents that Experian has actively tried to redefine the instructions for that code to prevent courts from finding it must be used. So not only did the Theodores and Bilodeau have fraudulent debts on their reports, those debts were reported as undisputed, actively dragging down their scores as if they had simply chosen not to pay valid bills.

The word the complaint uses for this, ultimately, is “coerce.” Experian, by continuing to report these balances and refusing to mark them as disputed, was helping the lenders coerce repayment of debts that nine state governments had already identified as fraudulent. These people were being financially squeezed into paying for something they never legitimately owed, because every time they tried to get credit, borrow money, rent a home, or prove their financial standing, that fake past-due balance was sitting there waiting to disqualify them.

Straight From the Court Filing: What They Said, What It Proves

All quotes below are drawn verbatim from the class action complaint, Civil Action No. 4:25-cv-00045, filed April 29, 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Newport News Division.

Complaint ¶27 — On Experian’s deliberate policy:

“Even if Experian had known everything alleged in this Complaint about the subject subscribers, it still would not have changed anything and would still have continued to blindly parrot its paying customer sources.”

• This is the complaint’s most direct statement of Experian’s willfulness. It asserts that Experian’s failure to investigate is structural and intentional, not the result of ignorance or insufficient information.
• This framing is legally significant: willful FCRA violations under 15 U.S.C. § 1681n expose Experian to punitive damages, not just actual damages. Negligent violations under § 1681o do not carry the same exposure.

Complaint ¶23-25 — Experian’s investigation procedures (or lack thereof):

“Experian does not follow any process or procedures to initially examine, audit, discuss, review or in any other way determine or measure the accuracy of the information any furnisher, including those at issue here, reports. Experian never investigates the credibility of its subscriber’s reporting before litigation is filed by a consumer. After accepting a subscriber as a customer and source, Experian does not follow any process or procedures to thereafter examine, audit, discuss, review or in any other way determine or measure the accuracy of the information any furnisher, including those at issue here, reports.”

• This passage is a triple-layered admission: there is no upfront vetting, no ongoing monitoring, and no response to new information short of a lawsuit. The process described is zero investigation at every stage.
• Given the FCRA requires “maximum possible accuracy,” zero investigation before, during, and after accepting a subscriber constitutes a systemic failure across every consumer report Experian has ever issued using data from these lenders.

Complaint ¶50-51 — The Attorneys General letter and Experian’s non-response:

“They attached to their disputes to Experian the link to the October 7, 2022 joint letter from the Attorneys General of Kentucky, North Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia to the Pink Energy Partners in which the Attorneys General advised the Pink Energy Partners that Pink Energy was under investigation and/or litigation by them for suspected violations of their respective states’ consumer protection laws as well as applicable federal statutes and regulations. The Attorneys General further demanded in their October 7, 2022 joint letter that the Pink Energy Partners ‘suspend loan payment obligations and the accrual of interest thereon…’ Despite the widely known and publicized statements for the aforementioned Attorneys General, Experian nonetheless chose to allow the Pink Energy Partners, such as Sunlight and Goodleap, to inaccurately report balances owed on these bogus loans.”

• Nine state Attorneys General, including Virginia’s, constituted direct government notice to Experian that these specific loans were under active investigation for consumer protection violations. Experian received this as part of consumer disputes. It took no action.
• The phrase “nonetheless chose” in the complaint signals intentional disregard. Experian was not uninformed. It made a decision to keep reporting the fraudulent accounts after receiving government-backed notice that they were fraudulent.
• The demand to “suspend loan payment obligations and the accrual of interest” came from law enforcement, not just consumers. Experian’s refusal to act on that demand connects it directly to the ongoing financial harm those consumers suffered.

Complaint ¶60 — Experian’s manipulation of dispute notation rules:

“Since numerous courts – including this one – have held that the omission of certain CCC codes violates the FCRA, Experian has tried to redefine and change the instructions for using such required code to prevent the reporting of an account is in active dispute and to prevent its suppression from a consumer’s credit score.”

• Experian is not simply failing to mark disputed accounts; it is actively working to narrow the circumstances in which courts can find that it was required to do so. This is regulatory evasion through definitional manipulation.
• The practical consequence for consumers is documented in the complaint: without the CCC dispute notation, the fraudulent account continues to drag down the credit score as if it were an undisputed, legitimately past-due debt.

Complaint ¶89(a) — The 53-year problem:

“The FCRA was enacted in 1970; Experian has had 53 years to become compliant.”

• This single line is included in the complaint’s enumeration of evidence that Experian’s violations are willful. A law that has existed for more than five decades, applied to a company with its own general counsel’s office and outside litigation counsel, cannot produce “accidental” non-compliance on a systemic basis.
• Fifty-three years of non-compliance, combined with the absence of any meaningful investigation procedures, supports the argument that Experian’s posture is a calculated choice to minimize compliance costs at the expense of consumer accuracy rights.

What Consumers Were Told vs. What Was Actually Happening

Who Pays When a Credit Bureau Chooses Profit Over People

Public Health

Financial stress is not a metaphor. It produces documented physiological harm, and the mechanism Experian enabled here is one of the most potent forms of sustained financial stress: a large, false, unremovable debt appearing on credit reports that victims cannot dispute their way out of.

• The complaint documents that Wilson and Lashanda Theodore experienced “significant credit harm” following the appearance of the fraudulent $64,864 Sunlight balance. Steven Bilodeau experienced “significant credit harm” from the fraudulent $85,384 Goodleap balance. The complaint also lists actual damages including “emotional stress, aggravation, inconvenience, embarrassment, and frustration” suffered by all named plaintiffs.
• People targeted by door-to-door solar sales are frequently older homeowners, often retired or near retirement on fixed incomes, who own their homes and are making long-term decisions about energy costs. Having a fraudulent loan appear as an active mortgage-style lien on the credit report for your only major asset creates direct financial anxiety about housing security, refinancing options, and estate planning.
• The sustained nature of the harm compounds its health impact. These fraudulent accounts were not resolved quickly. The Theodores disputed in April 2023 and the accounts remained. Bilodeau disputed in April 2024 and the account remained. The class action was filed in April 2025, two years after the first named plaintiff disputed. During all of that time, the psychological burden of an unresolvable, government-backed fraudulent debt sat on these people’s financial profiles.
• Consumers who cannot demonstrate the invalidity of a fraudulent account to a lender, as the complaint states the Theodores and Bilodeau were prevented from doing, face denied credit applications. Denied credit for housing, medical debt financing, or emergency borrowing carries direct health consequences for working-class families who do not have liquid savings to absorb those needs.

Economic Inequality

The Pink Energy scheme and Experian’s role in perpetuating it operated precisely at the intersection of economic vulnerability and corporate power. The harm fell on the people least equipped to absorb it and most dependent on accurate credit reporting to access basic economic resources.

• Door-to-door and phone solar sales, the method Pink Energy used, disproportionately target lower- and middle-income homeowners in communities where the pitch of “save money on your electric bill” is most financially compelling. The people most interested in reducing energy costs are those for whom those costs represent a meaningful share of income.
• The loans themselves were structured to maximize extraction: inflated principal balances, false interest figures, and embedded kickback commissions mean that working-class homeowners who signed up for a solar system were being enrolled in financial instruments that bore no honest relationship to the product’s value. They were paying for financial engineering, not solar panels.
• Statutory damages under the FCRA run between $100 and $1,000 per person per violation for willful violations. That range reflects what Congress decided was appropriate for an individual. For a class of thousands of consumers, the aggregate potential is significant. But per-person, it does not come close to compensating for two or more years of denied credit applications, higher interest rates on any credit that was extended, lost refinancing opportunities, and the cost of legal representation required to pursue a dispute that Experian was required to handle in the first place.
• Cross River Bank’s consent order reveals how fintech platforms systematically use bank charters to extend credit products into communities that traditional banks have historically underserved, while avoiding the oversight and consumer protections that apply to those banks. Experian’s uncritical acceptance of these entities as credible data sources effectively laundered their credibility into the official financial record of consumers across the country.
• Sunlight Financial’s bankruptcy and Goodleap’s history as a rebranded entity signal financial instability and regulatory pressure in the solar lending space. Consumers who signed with these lenders had no way to know they were dealing with entities that would be unavailable or financially collapsed when they tried to resolve the fraudulent charges. Experian’s failure to track this information left consumers holding accounts with no clear avenue for resolution.
• The class definition covers any U.S. resident whose Experian report contained a Pink Energy Partner account on or after January 1, 2023. The complaint describes the class as “so numerous that joinder of all their claims is impractical.” Thousands of people, spread across at least nine states, experienced this same harm from this same systemic failure. That is not individual bad luck. That is a policy outcome.

Put a Number on It

What Now: Who to Contact, Where to Push, and How to Fight Back

This case is active. The class is open. If you or someone you know had a Pink Energy-related loan account appear on an Experian credit report after January 1, 2023, you may be a class member. Here is what to do with that information.

Key Entities Named in This Case

• Experian Information Solutions, Inc.: The defendant. Headquartered in California, operates through a registered agent in Virginia. The company whose credit reporting practices are at the center of this lawsuit.
• Sunlight Financial LLC: Pink Energy lending partner. Reported the Theodores’ fraudulent $64,864 balance. Filed reorganization bankruptcy and emerged.
• Goodleap LLC (formerly Loanpal): Pink Energy lending partner. Reported Bilodeau’s fraudulent $85,384 balance. When asked by Experian to verify the data, confirmed its own fraudulent reporting.
• Cross River Bank: Fintech platform used as the nominal “bank” in the Sunlight arrangement. Subject to an FDIC Consent Order issued March 2023 for unfair and deceptive practices.
• Dividend Solar Finance LLC and Solar Mosaic, Inc.: Additional Pink Energy Partners named in the complaint as part of the lending network.
• Plaintiffs’ Counsel: Consumer Litigation Associates, P.C., Newport News, VA (Leonard A. Bennett, Thomas Domonoske, Mark C. Leffler, Adam W. Short, John Maravalli) and Kelly Guzzo, PLC, Fairfax, VA (Kristi C. Kelly). These are the attorneys pursuing this class action.

Watchlist: Who Has Jurisdiction Over This

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): The primary federal regulator of consumer reporting agencies under the FCRA. The CFPB has authority to supervise and sanction companies like Experian for systematic accuracy failures. File a complaint at consumerfinance.gov/complaint.
• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Has enforcement authority over unfair or deceptive practices including those by fintech lenders like Cross River Bank and the Pink Energy Partners. The FDIC’s consent order against Cross River was founded on FTC Act violations.
• Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC): Already issued a consent order against Cross River Bank in March 2023. Cross River’s continued reporting of fraudulent Pink Energy loans while under that consent order warrants scrutiny from the FDIC’s compliance monitoring arm.
• State Attorneys General: The nine AGs who signed the October 7, 2022 joint letter (KY, NC, IL, IN, MI, PA, SC, TN, VA) have already taken public positions on this fraud. Constituents in those states should contact their AG’s consumer protection division to demand follow-through on that letter.
• U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia, Newport News Division: Civil Action No. 4:25-cv-00045. This is where the case is pending. Court records are public through PACER.

Actions for People Directly Affected

• Pull your Experian credit report immediately: Check for any tradeline with the original creditor listed as Cross River Bank / Sunlight Financial, Goodleap LLC, Dividend Solar Finance, or Solar Mosaic. If it appears and relates to a solar panel purchase from Pink Energy or Power Home Solar, document everything with dates and screenshots.
• Contact the plaintiffs’ law firms: Consumer Litigation Associates, P.C. at clalegal.com and Kelly Guzzo, PLC at kellyguzzo.com are counsel of record for this class. If you believe you are a class member, reaching out to these firms is your most direct path to inclusion.
• File a written dispute via Certified Mail: If you have a Pink Energy-related account on your Experian report, send a formal written dispute via Certified Mail. Attach the October 7, 2022 joint AG letter (publicly available at attorneygeneral.gov). Keep the return receipt. This creates a legal record that Experian received and failed to properly investigate your dispute, which is exactly the pattern documented in this case.
• File a CFPB complaint: Report Experian’s failure to investigate your dispute at consumerfinance.gov/complaint. CFPB complaint volume is tracked by regulators and directly informs supervisory priorities. Volume matters.
• Connect with neighbors: If you are in a community where Pink Energy was active, door-to-door solar fraud rarely hits one household in isolation. Talk to neighbors. Local mutual aid networks and community organizations can help identify other affected residents who may not know they have grounds to join this class action.
• Track this case: Civil Action No. 4:25-cv-00045 is public record. Class certification, discovery outcomes, and any settlement will be filed in the Eastern District of Virginia. Watching it keeps pressure on all parties to move toward resolution for class members.