WASHINGTON – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) took bold action today against Global Tel Link (GTL), one of the country’s largest providers of money transfer services to justice-involved consumers, for violating the Consumer Financial Protection Act (CFPA) when it blocked consumers’ accounts and prevented friends and family from sending funds via debit card or credit card transfer. GTL also drained incarcerated consumers’ accounts after a period of inactivity, without notice, and failed to disclose complete fee schedules for money transfers.
“Families often have no choice but to rely on GTL to send money to their incarcerated loved ones so they can buy essentials like hygiene products, medicine, food, and phone calls,” said Ariel Nelson, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center who also directs NCLC’s Criminal Justice Debt & Reintegration Project. “The CFPB’s action today sends a clear message that incarcerated people and their families – some of the most economically vulnerable consumers and communities – cannot be preyed upon by private companies using their monopoly power and illegal schemes to increase profits.”
The order requires GTL and its subsidiaries, which also provide accounts to pay for calling services and online messaging, to pay at least $2 million in redress to affected consumers whose accounts were zeroed out and to consumers who paid to unblock a blocked commissary account. The order further requires GTL to pay $1 million in civil money penalties, disclose complete money transfer fee schedules, and stop blocking consumer accounts.
Related Resources
- Medical Debt Behind Bars: The Punishing Impact of Copays, Fees, and Other Carceral Medical Debt, September 2024
- Comments on FTC’s Proposed Rule on Junk Fees Affecting Justice-Involved People, February 2024
- Captive Concerns: Incarcerated People Face Obstacles to Reporting Consumer Abuses, July 2024
- Captive Consumers: How government agencies and private companies trap and profit off incarcerated people and their loved ones (Inquest), March 2022
- Sentenced to a Life of Debt: It Is Time for a Reassessment of How Bankruptcy Law Intersects with Fines and Fees to Keep People in Debt, February 2022
- Commercialized (In)Justice Litigation Guide, June 2020
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