TL;DR Kochava Inc., a data broker headquartered in Sandpoint, Idaho, built a commercial surveillance system that tracks the precise movements of hundreds of millions of Americans using GPS coordinates pulled from their phones, accurate to within 10 meters, and sold…
EvilCorporations.com • FTC Docket No. 192-3157 • 23 min read The Real Cost of “Affordable” LASIK Under Corporate Greed How LCA-Vision, operating as LasikPlus and Joffe MediCenter, ran a documented bait-and-switch scheme on people’s eyes — and kept doing it…
EvilCorporations.com • FTC v. FloatMe Corp., Case No. Filed December 29, 2023 • 32 min read Broke on Purpose: How FloatMe Built a Subscription Trap for America’s Most Financially Vulnerable TL;DR FloatMe Corp., co-founded by Joshua Sanchez and Ryan Cleary,…
Federal Investigation • Consumer Finance • Case No. 3:24-cv-00288 What Happens When Late-Stage Capitalism Makes Water a Luxury Aqua Finance, Inc. ran a door-to-door water treatment lending racket that left working-class families trapped in debt they never agreed to, with…
FTC Enforcement Action • Docket No. C-4802 Your Phone Was a Surveillance Device. They Sold the Recordings. EvilCorporations.com • FTC v. X-Mode Social / Outlogic, Docket No. C-4802 • 28 min read X-Mode Social and its successor Outlogic harvested precise…
The Zurixx Deception: A $104 Million Dollar Empire Built on Broken Dreams TL;DR Zurixx, LLC and its executives, including Cristopher A. Cannon, James M. Carlson, and Jeffrey D. Spangler, built a massive operation selling bogus “Real Estate Coaching” and “Business…
FTC Investigation • Case 2:24-cv-07660-SPG-JPR “Your Husband Has Angered Some People. I Suggest You Have Him Remove the Reviews.” EvilCorporations.com • FTC v. Ascend Capventures Inc. et al., Filed 09/09/2024 • 50 min read TL;DR Two men, William Basta and…
Investigative Report • FTC Enforcement Action Blueprint to Wealth:How a “Passive Income” DreamBecame an FTC Takedown EvilCorporations.com • FTC v. Business Revolution Group Inc. • 22 min read TL;DR Charles Joseph Garis, Jr., operating under the alias “Joe Gaines,” ran…
The Data Trap: ITMedia’s Predatory Loan Empire TL;DR A sprawling network of companies under the “ITMedia” banner operated over 200 websites like badcreditloans.com, luring financially vulnerable people with promises of “trusted lenders.” They collected highly sensitive data including Social Security…
TL;DR SYSTEMIC FRAUD: Vivint Smart Home’s commission-only, door-to-door sales force engaged in widespread identity theft to sign up customers who failed credit checks. “WHITE PAGING”: Sales reps used a technique called “white paging”—finding an unrelated person with a similar name—to…