The Federal Trade Commission requested and received an order from a federal judge to halt an operation marketing VISA-and MasterCard-branded stored-value cards from making unauthorized debits from consumers’ bank accounts.

According to a complaint filed by the FTC, the defendants marketed prepaid cards under a variety of names through Web sites and pop-up and e-mail advertisements that direct consumers to Web sites for the individual cards. These include Acclaim Visa, Impact Visa, Sterling Visa, VIP Advantage Visa, Vue Visa, Elite Plus MasterCard, Impact MasterCard, Secure Deposit MasterCard, VIP MasterCard, and Vue MasterCard. The defendants also market unrelated short-term loans on Web sites such as www.SuperAutoSource.com, www.SuperCashSource.com, and www.FastCashUSA.com.

The complaint alleges that through their prepaid card programs the defendants debited, without authorization, a $159.95 application and processing fee from consumers’ bank accounts, including from consumers who either had no contact with the defendants or had applied for an unrelated short-term loan.

The federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring unauthorized debiting and freezing the assets of EdebitPay, LLC, EDP Reporting, LLC, EDP Technologies Corporation, Secure Deposit Card Inc.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 9:46 am and is filed under In the News, Mastercard, Visa, financial advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.