NERD Solutions Charged Over $1,000 for Loan Forgiveness That’s Supposed To Be Free

The Human Cost

The Non-Financial Ledger

The cruelty of this scheme starts with trust. According to the FTC, the people on the phone already knew your Social Security number, your outstanding balance, and the name of your loan servicer, and they recited those details back to you to prove they were who they claimed to be. They said they were the Department of Education, or your servicer, and they used your own private information as the proof.

Then came the deeper violation. The complaint describes telemarketers walking borrowers into handing over the one-time security codes from their Federal Student Aid accounts, then changing the passwords and taking control of the federal accounts that hold a person’s loan history, address, and contact information. The same callers told borrowers to stop paying their real loans, without warning them that missed payments can wreck a credit score and pile on interest, late fees, and penalties.

The aftermath is a quiet kind of betrayal. The FTC says borrowers ended up worse off than before they ever picked up the phone. When people realized something was wrong and asked to cancel or get their money back, the companies refused or simply ignored them.

In Their Own Filings

Legal Receipts

“Defendants have deceived consumers with student loan debt into paying hundreds or thousands of dollars” FTC Complaint, Paragraph 2

• The agency frames the entire operation as deception aimed at people already carrying debt.
• The fee size is stated up front: hundreds to thousands of dollars per person.

“But Defendants’ promises are false. Defendants do not seek or deliver loan forgiveness.” FTC Complaint, Paragraph 3

• The core product, loan forgiveness, was never pursued or delivered, per the FTC.
• The complaint adds that in many cases the companies did not even apply for the free federal programs.

“Defendants instruct consumers to stop paying their loan servicers.” FTC Complaint, Paragraph 26

• Stopping payments is what triggers the downstream credit damage, balance growth, and collection risk.
• The FTC says the companies did not disclose those consequences, and sometimes claimed credit would improve.

“Defendants have taken in gross revenues of at least $9.8 million” Court’s Findings of Fact, Temporary Restraining Order, April 13, 2026

• This is a judge’s finding of good cause, not just an allegation by the agency.
• It is the figure the court relied on when it ordered an asset freeze.

Claim Versus Record

Public Deception

The FTC documents a gap between every major promise made on these calls and what the companies actually were and actually did.

• They said they were, or worked with, the Department of Education or your loan servicer. The FTC states they had no affiliation with any government agency or servicer.
• They said paying the program would secure loan forgiveness. The complaint says they neither sought nor delivered it, and often never applied.
• They said stopping payments would not hurt, or would improve, your credit. In reality, missed payments risk lower scores, higher balances, and collections.
• They said an up-front fee was required to access relief. The same federal programs are available directly, at no cost and with no application fee.

Money First

Profit-Maximization At All Costs

The design extracted money before delivering anything, and it kept extracting even when borrowers owed nothing at all.

• Fees were collected up front, before any work on the loans: typically several hundred to over a thousand dollars, plus a recurring monthly charge.
• Those fees were taken before renegotiating, settling, or altering any loan term, the exact advance-fee conduct the Telemarketing Sales Rule forbids.
• During the COVID-19 payment pause, when borrowers owed nothing, people who paid these companies handed over more than their loans required.
• When borrowers asked to cancel or get refunds, the companies refused or ignored them.
• The FTC alleges at least $8.8 million collected from consumers over three years.

“Defendants continued to receive fees from consumers despite never renegotiating, settling, reducing, or otherwise altering the terms of the consumers’ student loan debt.”

Corporate Structure

The Contractor Shield

The operation ran through two separate companies and several trade names, a structure the FTC argues was a single common enterprise that should not shield anyone from liability.

• Two corporations split the work: NERD Solutions Inc. in California and ED REF Inc., incorporated in Wyoming with operations in Tustin, California.
• Each ran under a consumer-facing trade name (New Education Relief and Edvantage Relief) that did not match the legal entity behind it.
• The FTC alleges the two shared employees, the same consumer-facing phone numbers, and the same Philippines IP addresses, calling them a common enterprise.
• Because of that common enterprise, the FTC argues each company is liable for the other’s conduct.
• The companies were owned and controlled by two individuals who signed for the bank and merchant accounts.

Who It Lands On

Societal Impact Mapping

Economic Inequality

The scheme concentrated its damage on people already carrying one of the most distressed forms of debt in the country.

• Student debt is the second-largest class of consumer debt: over 42.5 million borrowers owe more than $1.8 trillion.
• Roughly one in ten Americans have defaulted on a student loan, and nearly a quarter default within five years; this is the population the scheme targeted.
• The fees pushed borrowers into worse positions: higher balances from interest and late fees, drained bank accounts, and damaged credit.
• Borrowers were charged for forgiveness programs the government provides for free, money taken from people least able to spare it.
• People who paid during the federal payment pause lost money on a debt that required no payments at all.

Follow The Money

Who Pays? Following The Cost

Every dollar and every consequence flowed to the borrowers; the companies collected, and the consumers absorbed the damage.

• Consumers paid the up-front fees and recurring monthly charges directly from their cards and bank accounts.
• After being told to stop paying, borrowers absorbed interest, late fees, penalties, and possible collection actions on their real loans.
• The credit-score damage landed on the borrowers, not on the companies that caused it.
• The aggregate transfer: at least $8.8 million collected from consumers over three years per the complaint, and gross revenues of at least $9.8 million found by the court.

What A Legitimate Fix Looks Like

The core failure this case exposes: a fraudulent industry can charge desperate borrowers for help the government already gives away free, and operate for years before anyone stops it. The recommendations below are our editorial analysis, not findings of the source documents.

Regulatory Track

• The FTC’s advance-fee ban for debt-relief telemarketing, the rule these companies allegedly broke, should be backed by proactive monitoring of student-loan “relief” advertisers rather than after-the-fact lawsuits.
• Payment processors and merchant banks handling student-loan “relief” charges should be required to verify that no illegal advance fees are being collected before processing them.
• Federal Student Aid should block third-party password resets initiated during live phone calls and flag the account-takeover pattern described in this case.

Legislative Track

• Penalties should be strengthened so operators of impersonation-based debt-relief scams face personal liability that survives shell-company and common-enterprise structures.
• Every debt-relief solicitation should carry a clear, standardized disclosure that federal forgiveness programs are free and available directly.
• Deception and impersonation statutes should cover government and business impersonation continuously, closing the kind of timing gaps that precede new rules taking effect.

Corporate Governance Track

• Debt-relief companies should be barred from collecting any fee before delivering a documented, completed service, enforced through independent audit.
• Owners who serve as sole officers and account signatories, as alleged here, should carry direct personal compliance accountability for telemarketing conduct.
• Consumer data captured on sales calls (Social Security numbers, Federal Student Aid logins) should be walled off and auditable, never reused, sold, or used to access accounts.

Take Action

What Now?

Direct your energy at the named operators, NERD Solutions Inc., ED REF Inc., Natalie Rodriguez, and Pablo Eduardo Ortiz, and at the agency positioned to act.

• Watch the FTC (ftc.gov), which brought this case and is seeking refunds for harmed consumers.
• Report student-loan scam calls to the FTC and your state attorney general; this case was built on consumer complaints and declarations.
• Apply directly and for free for federal forgiveness and repayment programs through the U.S. Department of Education at studentaid.gov.
• Never hand over a one-time security code or a Federal Student Aid password reset to anyone who calls you.
• Organize locally: share scam-spotting resources through unions, campus groups, and mutual-aid networks so isolated borrowers are not the only line of defense.