MONSTER LOANS
ORDERED TO REPAY $18 MILLION TO CHEATED CUSTOMERS
“So easy…it’s scary” is a phrase that is commonly heard in California. The phrase is a tagline from a California mortgage company, Monster Loans. Recently, the company was allegedly involved in a complex scheme that illegally offered debt relief services to millions of Americans whose personal information was unlawfully obtained from Experian, according to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
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n May 14, the Bureau filed a proposed final judgment to resolve its allegations in its lawsuit against Chou Team Realty, LLC, which operates as Monster Loans, and other individuals and related companies such as Thomas Chou and Sean Cowell. CFPB alleged that Chou and Cowell, between 2015 and 2017, were at the frontline of a scheme to use Monster Loans account with a ma jor credit bureau to unlawfully obtain consumer reports for their companies that offer student loan debt relief. The debt relief companies used the consumer reports to deceptively market their services across the nation while illegally charging a fee. The debt relief companies are accused of having collected at least $15 million in the illegal fees before consumers received any adjustment to their student loans and any payments towards their adjusted loans. According to the Bureau’s allegations, Monster Loans had pursued a series of other plans to further their scam. In 2017 the mortgage company allegedly helped to establish a fake company known as Lend Tech Loans, which presented itself as a mortgage brokerage. However, the company never engaged in any mortgaging activity. Instead, it “has only ever been used to unlawfully obtain consumer report information” that was used in furthering the student debt relief scheme. “As alleged in the complaint, because of Monster Loans’ assistance, Lend Tech Loans was able to wrongfully obtain consumer reports for over 12 million
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THE POWER IS NOW MAGAZINE | JULY 2020
