Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin announced on Friday that Credit One Bank. N.A. (Credit One) will pay $10.2 million to settle a civil lawsuit brought by a statewide team of district attorneys. The case was filed in Riverside Superior Court. The People’s consumer protection action asserts that Credit One and its agents engaged in unlawful debt collection activities.
The investigation and prosecution of this case were handled by the California Debt Collection Task Force, a statewide law enforcement team composed of the district attorneys of Riverside, San Diego, Santa Clara, and Los Angeles counties.
The complaint alleges Credit One, directly and through its agents, made debt collection phone calls to California residents with unreasonable and excessive frequency. Prosecutors also allege that, at times, Credit One persisted in calling consumers after they stated they no longer wished to receive the calls or when the calls were made to wrong numbers. Credit One denied these allegations.
On February 19, the court ordered Credit One to pay a total of $10.2 million, including $9 million in civil penalties and $1.2 million in investigative costs. The judgment also requires Credit One, a Nevada-based corporation, to comply with state and federal law relating to consumer debt collection calls and maintain certain business practices designed to ensure compliance with the law.
This is the fourth judgment obtained by the task force against debt collectors over the past several years. The task force obtained judgments against Allied Interstate, LLC in 2018, Synchrony Bank in 2021, and Capital One Bank in 2022.
