The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is sending payments to victims of a credit card offer scam that was operated by the personal finance company Credit Karma between 2018 and 2021. Credit Karma sent notices to hundreds of thousands of people telling them that they were “pre-approved” for credit cards offered by banks that used Credit Karma to promote their financial products. Unfortunately, many “pre-approved” people after completing the necessary credit card applications were denied the credit cards. Unfortunately, for those applying for the credit cards which they were led to believe was a sure thing but were denied, their credit scores were reduced because applying for the credit card constituted a hard inquiry on their credit report, which upon their being denied the card damaged their credit score.
The FTC took legal action against Credit Karma for this scam in September of 2022 and has now settled the claim with Credit Karma. Under the terms of the settlement, Credit Karma paid three million dollars to the FTC to be distributed to people harmed by the scam.
TIPS
The FTC is sending notices to 497.425 people who may be eligible for a payment. You can apply for a payment if you were offered a pre-approved credit card from Credit Karma, but were ultimately denied when you applied for the credit card. Most of the people affected will get an email from the FTC with information about how to apply for a payment. Some people, for whom the FTC does not have an email address will receive their notice by regular mail. In order to file a claim, you will need to submit a Claim ID which you can find in the email or letter from the FTC. Claims can be filed online at ftc.gov/Credit Karma. The deadline for filing a claim is March 4, 2024.
For more information, go to the “FTC Scam Refunds” section of Scamicide.com which can be found in the middle of the first page of Scamicide.com.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and type in your email address on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”