FTC and Washington Sue Riverside Payments Over Alleged Hidden Fees

The Federal Trade Commission and the State of Washington sued the Vancouver, Washington card-processing company Riverside Payments on November 2, 2026, alleging it sold small businesses on processing savings that never arrived and then made the contracts very hard to exit. A stipulated order filed alongside the complaint has not been signed.

Information last verified on November 3, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Status: A complaint and a proposed stipulated order for permanent injunction, monetary judgment and other relief were filed on November 2, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, No. 2:26-cv-04228. The order is a stipulation between the parties, not a ruling: its SO ORDERED block is unexecuted, with blanks left for the day, month and year above the words UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE, and it was filed as Document 2-1, an attachment. As of November 3, 2026 the FTC's own case page for the matter lists the status as pending and shows only the two November 2 filings. Every factual assertion about the defendants' conduct below is an allegation. The order itself records that the defendants "neither admit nor deny any of the allegations in the Complaint, except as specifically stated in this Order."

Jurisdiction scope: This covers one federal civil enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington brought by the FTC and the Washington Attorney General, and the proposed consent order filed with it. It is not a criminal case, not a class action, and not a ruling on the merits by any court. The FTC Act and Gramm-Leach-Bliley counts reach conduct nationwide; the sixth count applies Washington's Consumer Protection Act and is brought by Washington alone. Nothing in this action creates a private claim for any individual merchant, and the article does not address any other payment processor.

What Happened

Riverside Payments, Inc. and Cascade Equipment Leasing, LLC both operate from 5721 SE Columbia Way, Suite 150, in Vancouver, Washington. Riverside is a Washington corporation; Cascade is a Delaware limited liability company that also does business as Cascade Capital Group. Brandon Skinner is alleged to be a 50 percent owner and Riverside's president and chief executive; Jason Reese is alleged to be a 50 percent owner and its secretary and chief financial officer. Both are alleged to own 50 percent of Cascade. The complaint pleads the two companies as a common enterprise that shares owners, officers, employees, a business address, marketing materials, a customer relationship management system and commingled funds, which is the theory that makes each corporate defendant liable for the other's conduct.

The clients are small businesses. The complaint describes restaurants and retail shops that signed up to accept card payments, solicited primarily through telemarketing and door-to-door visits by hundreds of commission-only sales agents working from scripts the complaint alleges Riverside wrote, required, and monitored by listening to live calls and reviewing recordings.

The savings claims

The complaint alleges a layered pitch. A door-to-door flyer, reproduced in the complaint, claimed that switching to Riverside saves businesses an average of $2,000 per year and advertised free EMV terminals. Marketing materials claimed: "You are pre-approved for 0% debit transactions and 1% average on credit transactions." The complaint alleges agents attributed those rates to a "strategic alliance" with Visa and Mastercard that let Riverside offer small shops "the same great rates" as Fortune 500 companies by cutting out "the middleman," and alleges flatly that no such alliance exists and that Riverside and its sales organizations are themselves middlemen, with clients routed through at least three processing companies before reaching the card networks.

The individualized numbers, the complaint alleges, came from a spreadsheet. According to the complaint, a sales agent sent the prospect's current processing statement to a Riverside national sales manager, who entered the figures into an internal spreadsheet and had discretion to edit the inputs so that the output showed savings of roughly 15 to 25 percent against the current provider (the complaint writes the range as 15-25%). The quote sheet handed to the business showed an effective rate, a yearly total and a savings figure. The complaint alleges some quote sheets claimed savings of over 40 percent, or nearly 60 percent, against the existing processor, which for some businesses would have represented more than $10,000 a year. (The FTC's own release compresses that paragraph into a 40% to 60% range; the complaint states the two figures separately and as examples.) It alleges the quoted costs omitted annual fees, monthly software and technology fees, American Express charges and any possibility of rate increases, and that clients then also incurred activation fees, batch fees, data security non-compliance fees and inactive-processing fees that had never appeared on the quote.

The contract

The closing is the heart of the case. On the complaint's account, the business was asked for a voided check, and so for its bank account number, before it received the agreement containing the material terms. It then received, the complaint alleges, an emailed link to a roughly 26-page PDF to sign electronically, with the sales agent still physically present and a national sales manager reviewing the document briefly by phone.

Three terms, the complaint alleges, were in that PDF and in neither the agent's script nor the manager's: a three-year initial term on the Riverside processing agreement that automatically extends a year at a time, a $695 early termination fee listed at the bottom of a page of numerous other fees, and Cascade's separate equipment lease, which the complaint alleges runs four years, cannot be canceled, and then renews month to month unless the client returns the equipment in good condition and pays a $150 restocking fee or buys it out. The complaint alleges that neither the scripts nor the agreement stated whether and how a client could avoid the automatic renewal after three years.

On the lease specifically, the complaint quotes the training materials:

"the [equipment] lease should never come up pre-quote," and if it does, "deflect for the end of the sale."

Source: Complaint, para. 51, FTC and State of Washington v. Riverside Payments, Inc., No. 2:26-cv-04228 (W.D. Wash. filed Nov. 2, 2026).

It also alleges a script answer for prospects who asked about the fee schedule: that the agreement was boilerplate from Visa and Mastercard, and that "99% [of the fees] don't apply to you [and the] main thing is the transaction fee is exactly what we discussed and quoted."

The lease economics are illustrated with one example. The complaint alleges that from 2020 to 2024 a North Carolina small business paid about $47 a month for four years, roughly $2,250 in total, for a machine that would have cost around $400 to buy new.

The cancellation allegations

The complaint alleges the pitch carried an explicit guarantee. Agents allegedly told prospects they could try the service "risk free" under a "Guarantee of Savings," that if the savings did not appear the defendants would "switch you back to a provider of your choice at absolutely no cost to you" and pay the business $500 "for the time and hassle," and that "$500 in your pocket" was the "worst thing that can happen" to a client who signed up. Count II enumerates that promise, including the $500 payment, among the cancellation representations it alleges were false.

Count III is an unfairness count, and it is about process rather than words. The complaint alleges Riverside's written procedure required staff to treat a cancellation request as a "dead deal" only after the business refused at least three times to continue, that cancellation could not be completed through an inbound call because the cancellation team was described to clients as "purely outbound," and that the promised outbound call often never came. It alleges that clients commonly learned of the $695 fee for the first time when they tried to leave, and that even merchants past the three-year initial term were given no mechanism to stop the renewal.

The complaint offers dated examples: a Florida auto parts store owner who began trying to cancel in December 2024 and was allegedly still being billed through at least June 2025, told for the first time in May 2025 that there was an early termination fee and that the lease could not be canceled; an Indiana business owner in March 2025 promised a callback that allegedly never came; an Indiana art gallery owner who mentioned hiring an attorney in April 2025 and then allegedly received roughly ten calls over months that the complaint characterizes as checks on whether he had retained counsel rather than attempts to resolve his request; and a Kentucky restaurant owner past the initial term who allegedly spent over a year on calls, emails and a certified letter without a meaningful response. In several instances, the complaint alleges, owners closed their bank accounts to stop the charges.

The complaint alleges hundreds of complaints reached the defendants directly, through the Better Business Bureau, and from at least ten state attorneys general, and that the practices continued.

The sales agent count

The fourth Section 5 count concerns recruiting rather than merchants. Both agency releases name it, and the complaint sets out the figures. The complaint alleges Riverside advertised on platforms including ZipRecruiter and Greenhouse that the sales agent role carried average yearly earnings between $75,000 and $95,000, told candidates in an interview script that "average full time reps" make $6,000 a month, and told trainees on the first day of training that top reps "signing 12+" businesses a month earn between $100,000 and $120,000 a year.

Against that, the complaint alleges the payroll records: in 2024 the defendants paid $1,249,850.93 in total compensation to 330 workers classified as 1099 contractors, an average of $3,787 for the year, and for the first five months of 2025 an average of $4,858 per worker, which the complaint calculates would annualize to under $12,000. It states: "No sales agent earned six figures in 2023 or 2024."

The agency's framing

Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the companies "promised small businesses significant savings, but instead of saving money locked them into costly, multi-year contracts and made it very difficult to cancel," and that the agency "will hold accountable companies that deceive small businesses, whose hard work powers our economy."

Source: FTC press release, "FTC, Washington Take Action Against Payment Processor for Deceiving Small Businesses About Costs and Cancellation Terms," November 2, 2026.

The Commission vote authorizing staff to file the complaint and the stipulated order was 2-0. Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said he was gratified that the state "can now deliver relief to impacted Washington businesses," and the state's release says more than 300 Washington small businesses are eligible.

What the Proposed Order Would Require

The order text runs 20 pages, followed by signature pages and a two-page draft merchant notice, 25 pages in all as filed. Because it is unsigned, none of it binds anyone yet. What it would do, if entered:

Conduct bans (Sections I through III and IX). Permanent bans on misrepresenting the costs of the services, that a customer will save money relative to another provider, the conditions of cancellation including any "risk free" framing, and any other material fact. Section II requires a reasonable basis, held and relied upon at the time, for any cost or savings claim. Section III extends the same ban specifically to negative-option offers: the existence of the feature, how and to what the customer is consenting, any deadline to stop a charge, cancellation, refund conditions and cost. Section IX bars earnings claims without competent and reliable substantiation, which must be made available on request to a prospective agent and to the FTC.

Negative-option duties (Sections IV, V and VI). Clear and conspicuous disclosure of all material terms before consent, including every deadline to stop a charge or avoid extending a term and any early termination fee. Separate, unambiguously affirmative consent to the negative-option feature itself, by check box or signature for written offers, and for oral offers an express confirmation covering the charge, including at a minimum the last four digits of the account to be charged, the existence of the recurring feature and the specific steps to stop it, with records kept for at least three years including unedited voice recordings of oral transactions. And a cancellation mechanism that, in the order's words, "must be at least as easy to use as the mechanism the consumer used to consent to the Negative Option Feature," though it may require the return of leased equipment.

The 60-day waiver (Sections VII and VIII), with its limits. Within 30 days after entry, Riverside would email every current merchant a notice in the form of Attachment A, under the subject line the order prescribes, "Notice Regarding Termination Right, Waiver of Early Termination Fee, and Refund," reminding them of the option to rescind the processing agreement and informing them that the early termination fee or rescission penalty is waived for a 60-day period. Section VIII then bars the defendants from collecting an early termination fee from any merchant who responds within that window. Two limits matter. First, the clock has not started and cannot start until a judge signs the order. Second, Section VII.A defines "rescind" to exclude lease agreements, and the draft notice tells merchants that the equipment lease "will remain in effect according to its original terms." The waiver addresses the processing contract, not the four-year lease the complaint treats as the harder trap.

The money (Section X). A judgment of $32,083,921 is entered jointly and severally against all four defendants, and then suspended. The actual obligation is $600,000, to be paid into a Merchant Redress Fund and distributed pro rata by merchant processing volume over the six months before the order date, by ACH credit, after the FTC approves a distribution plan the defendants must propose within 60 days. The draft notice tells merchants a refund arrives automatically whether or not they cancel. If distribution proves impossible, the defendants would pay $600,000 to the Commission within 80 days of entry instead.

A suspended judgment is not forgiveness. The plaintiffs' agreement to suspend rests expressly on the truthfulness of sworn financial statements signed March 25, 2026 by Skinner, Reese, Riverside and Cascade, plus supplemental material counsel sent on June 1 and June 23, 2026. The suspension lifts as to any defendant if the redress fund is not funded and distributed, or if the court finds on motion by the FTC or Washington that the defendant failed to disclose a material asset, materially misstated an asset's value, or made any other material misstatement or omission. The full amount would then become immediately due, less payments made, plus interest from entry. The order also provides that the complaint's allegations would be taken as true in later FTC or Washington litigation, including a bankruptcy nondischargeability proceeding under 11 U.S.C. 523(a)(2)(A).

Two smaller points about the document itself. It contains no civil penalty and no attorney's fee award for Washington, although the complaint demanded both. And its findings paragraph cites "RCW 19.80.020" as the provision charged, a section of chapter 19.80 RCW (Trade Names) that was repealed in 1984. The complaint charges RCW 19.86.020, so the order's reference appears to be a typographical error.

What the Law Actually Says

Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 45(a), prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce. Four of the six counts rest on it. Three allege deception (total costs and savings, cancellation conditions, agent earnings) and one alleges unfairness, which under 15 U.S.C. 45(n) requires substantial injury consumers cannot reasonably avoid that is not outweighed by countervailing benefits. Count III's cancellation-barrier theory runs through that unfairness standard rather than through any false statement.

Section 521 of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, 15 U.S.C. 6821, is the unusual pairing. The section is captioned "Privacy protection for customer information of financial institutions" and its subsection (a) is captioned "Prohibition on obtaining customer information by false pretenses." These are the pretexting provisions, enacted as Section 521 of Public Law 106-102 on November 12, 1999. Pretexting in the statute means getting at someone's financial records by lying: subsection (a) reaches obtaining, attempting to obtain, or causing the disclosure of a financial institution's customer information about another person by making a false statement to the institution's officer, employee or agent, by making a false statement to one of its customers, or by presenting a document known to be forged or false. The prong charged here is the middle one. The complaint's theory is that the voided check was collected from the merchant, a bank customer, on the strength of the savings and risk-free claims, so the bank account number was customer information of a financial institution obtained by false statements to that institution's customer.

That count also carries the money. The complaint sets out the chain in its own paragraphs 93 and 94: Section 522(a) of the GLB Act lets the FTC enforce Section 521 as it enforces the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, Section 814(a) of the FDCPA treats such a violation as if it were a violation of an FTC trade regulation rule, and Section 19 of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 57b, then authorizes the court to order redress, rescission or reformation of contracts and refunds. Section 13(b), 15 U.S.C. 53(b), is the injunction authority.

Washington's Consumer Protection Act, RCW 19.86.020, is captioned "Unfair competition, practices, declared unlawful" and dates to 1961. The complaint quotes it: unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in the conduct of any trade or commerce are declared unlawful. Count VI lists seven specific Washington theories, including pressuring merchants into signing electronic contracts in a rushed manner while deflecting questions, inflating lease cost with what it calls unnecessary filler equipment, and imposing one-sided lease terms including a waiver of the statute of limitations, a unilateral attorney fee provision, a jury trial waiver and a class action waiver. Washington's remedies under RCW 19.86.080 and RCW 19.86.140 include injunctive relief, restitution, costs and fees, and civil penalties of up to $7,500 for each violation of RCW 19.86.020.

What is not charged. The complaint pleads no count under the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act. ROSCA's operative provision, 15 U.S.C. 8403, is headed "Negative option marketing on the Internet" and makes it unlawful to charge a consumer for goods or services "sold in a transaction effected on the Internet through a negative option feature" unless the seller discloses all material terms before obtaining billing information, obtains express informed consent before charging, and provides simple mechanisms to stop recurring charges. Those three duties are the ones Sections IV, V and VI of the proposed order would impose by consent. ROSCA counts have appeared in other recent FTC hidden-fee filings, including the agency's action against the restaurant point-of-sale company Toast, which we cover in our report on that complaint and its ROSCA counts. This complaint charges the same auto-renewal conduct as deception and unfairness under Section 5 instead, and the public record does not explain the choice.

For the standing federal and state rules on auto-renewal outside an enforcement action, see our explainer on the federal status of click-to-cancel rules and the state auto-renewal statutes still on the books. Local rules are moving too: New York City finalized its own click-to-cancel rule and proposed an all-in pricing rule for fees.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

Start with where the negative-option rules in this order came from, because the regulatory history is doing real work. On November 15, 2024 the FTC published a final rule amending its Negative Option Rule that would have required, industry-wide, no misrepresentation of any material fact while marketing with a negative-option feature, material-term disclosures before billing information was collected, unambiguously affirmative consent, and simple cancellation mechanisms. The Eighth Circuit vacated that 2024 rule in Custom Communications, Inc. v. FTC, 142 F.4th 1060 (8th Cir. 2025), holding the Commission's failure to issue a preliminary regulatory analysis procedurally insufficient. In February 2026 the FTC published a conforming final rule at 91 Fed. Reg. 6507, effective February 12, 2026, which, in its words, "revises the Negative Option Rule to restore it in the form it existed before the 2024 Rule became effective," a recodification that, per the notice's own footnote, included "changing the full name of the rule back to 'Use of Prenotification Negative Option Plans.'"

Set the two documents side by side. The four duties the vacated rule would have imposed on everyone are, almost item for item, the obligations Sections III, IV, V and VI of this proposed order would impose on these four defendants. That is what consent-order enforcement looks like when a rule is gone: the agency obtains the same requirements, but one defendant at a time, bound only on the parties who signed, and only for as long as the order stands. The reach is narrow and the leverage is high. Whether that is an adequate substitute for a rule of general application is a policy question, not a legal one, and we do not take a position on it.

The second point is about who the plaintiff says the victims are. The word used throughout the complaint is "consumers," and the businesses behind it are restaurants, retail shops, an auto parts store and an art gallery. The FTC Act's protections are not limited to natural persons buying for personal use, and the GLB pretexting count works here precisely because a small business is a bank's customer. But merchant services sit in a gap in most people's intuitions about consumer protection. A restaurant owner signing a card-processing agreement does not expect the deal to be reviewed under the same statute that governs a gym membership. Whether the state auto-renewal statutes of the last decade reach a commercial equipment lease is a separate question, and not one this filing answers. Section 5 itself does not draw that line.

Third, note the architecture of the alleged harm, because it is not a pricing case. On the complaint's account the pricing claims were the entry point and the paperwork was the trap: a bank account number collected before the agreement arrived, a 26-page PDF signed with a salesperson in the room, a termination fee on a page of fees, and a second contract with a company the merchant had not heard of running a year longer than the first. Each piece is individually defensible as standard commercial practice. The complaint's theory is that the combination is what caused the injury, which fits a count pleaded as unfairness rather than deception. That is a harder count to prove and a more useful one if proven, because it does not depend on any particular sentence being false.

Fourth, the money deserves plain description. A $32,083,921 judgment that is suspended on payment of $600,000 is a $600,000 settlement with a contingent liability attached. The headline figure is doing two jobs: it fixes the stipulated measure of consumer redress for later proceedings, and it prices the consequence of an inaccurate financial statement. It is not a transfer of $32 million, and reporting it as one would be wrong. The $600,000 is also the whole redress pool for what the complaint calls thousands of small business clients nationwide, distributed pro rata by processing volume, so an individual ACH credit would be a small fraction of what any one merchant paid. The FTC and Washington both describe the suspension as resting on the defendants' inability to pay.

How This Affects You

A few general observations, none of them advice about any particular contract.

If you run a business that processes cards through Riverside, nothing in the proposed order changes your contract today. Any merchant communication on this would arrive from Riverside itself, by email, under the subject line quoted above, and only after a judge enters the order. The version in the filing is a draft: it still carries a blank where the fund amount goes, and a merchant should compare whatever notice actually arrives against the entered order rather than against this one. Two things in it are easy to misread, both covered above: the fee waiver reaches the processing agreement and not the equipment lease, and the refund is described as automatic rather than something a merchant claims.

More broadly, the facts the complaint alleges describe a document problem rather than a pricing problem. The terms that mattered were in the agreement; the dispute is about whether a business could find them. The terms the complaint says went unmentioned are all of one kind: the page listing the fees, the identity of the lessor, the length of each agreement, and what happens when an initial term ends. Whether any of this gives rise to a claim in a particular situation is a question for a lawyer licensed in that state. If you want to report a practice like this rather than litigate it, our guide to which agency takes which kind of complaint explains the routing, including the FTC and state attorney general paths the complaint says hundreds of these merchants already used.

What Happens Next

The next event in the record is the district court's decision whether to enter the stipulated order. Nothing in the proposed order operates before that, and the FTC case page listed the matter as pending with no entered order as of November 3, 2026.

If the court enters it, the document sets its own clock from the date of entry:

• Within 7 days: each defendant provides a taxpayer identification number to the Commission.
• Within 30 days: Riverside emails the Attachment A notice to all current merchants, then within 14 days of that mailing sends it by U.S. mail to any merchant whose email bounced, and within 10 days of mailing files a sworn compliance declaration.
• 60 days from a merchant's receipt of the notice: the window to request rescission of the processing agreement without the early termination fee.
• Within 45 days of sending the notice: the defendants report to the FTC how many merchants responded. The FTC may direct a resend to non-responders at its sole discretion.
• Within 60 days: the defendants propose a pro rata distribution of the $600,000 Merchant Redress Fund based on processing volume in the six preceding months, which the FTC may accept or modify. ACH refunds follow within 14 days of approval. If distribution is impossible, $600,000 goes to the Commission within 80 days of entry.
• Ongoing: recordkeeping for 10 years after entry with 5-year retention, order acknowledgments, compliance reporting, and FTC compliance monitoring, including the ability to pose as a customer. The court retains jurisdiction to construe, modify and enforce.

The events that would turn this back into hard news: entry of the order (or a refusal to enter it, or entry in modified form), a later motion by the FTC or Washington to lift the suspension on the ground that a financial representation was false, or any defendant's failure to fund the redress fund on schedule. We will update this page when the record moves.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice. It describes allegations in a civil complaint that have not been proven and a stipulated order that no court has entered. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. For advice about a specific contract or dispute, consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction.

Related articles

• Click to Cancel Laws: Federal Status and State Auto-Renewal Rules
• FTC and Seven State Attorneys General Sue Toast Over Alleged Hidden Fees and Hard-to-Cancel Restaurant Subscriptions
• NYC Finalizes Click-to-Cancel Rule, Proposes All-In Pricing Rule for Junk Fees
• Where to Report a Scam: Which Agency, and Can You Get Money Back?

Last updated: 2026-11-03. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-11-03.

Frequently Asked Questions

Has the Riverside Payments settlement been approved by a judge?

Not as of November 3, 2026. The document is a stipulated order the parties filed on November 2, 2026 as an attachment to the complaint in No. 2:26-cv-04228 (W.D. Wash.). The judge's signature line is blank, and the FTC's own case page for matter 2523018 lists the case as pending with no entered order. The FTC's press release states that stipulated final orders have the force of law when approved and signed by the district court judge.

Did Riverside Payments admit to deceiving small businesses?

No. The proposed order states that the defendants neither admit nor deny any of the allegations in the complaint except as specifically stated in the order, and that they admit only the facts necessary to establish jurisdiction, for purposes of this action. Everything the FTC and Washington describe about the defendants' conduct is an allegation that has not been proven in court.

Is anyone paying the $32 million judgment?

No. Section X of the proposed order enters a $32,083,921 judgment jointly and severally against all four defendants and then suspends it. The payment obligation is $600,000 into a Merchant Redress Fund. Both the FTC and Washington attribute the suspension to the defendants' inability to pay the full amount. The suspension would lift if the fund is not funded and distributed, or if the court finds on motion by the FTC or Washington that a defendant failed to disclose a material asset, materially misstated an asset's value, or made another material misstatement in the sworn financial statements dated March 25, 2026.

When does the 60-day early termination fee waiver start?

It has not started. Under Section VII of the proposed order, Riverside would email a notice to all current merchants within 30 days AFTER the court enters the order, and the draft notice in Attachment A gives merchants 60 days from receiving it to request rescission without the early termination fee. No order has been entered as of November 3, 2026, so no notice is due and no window is running.

Does the proposed waiver cancel the equipment lease too?

No. Section VII.A of the proposed order defines rescission to cover the merchant processing agreements and any ancillary agreements but expressly excludes lease agreements, and the draft notice tells merchants the equipment lease would remain in effect according to its original terms. The complaint alleges that lease runs four years, is non-cancelable, and is one year longer than the three-year processing agreement.

What is the $695 fee the FTC complaint describes?

The complaint alleges Riverside's merchant processing application and agreement sets a three-year initial term and charges a $695 fee for terminating early, listed near the bottom of a page containing numerous other fees inside a roughly 26-page document, and that the fee appeared in neither the sales agents' required scripts nor the closing script. It alleges many clients first learned of it when they tried to cancel. These are allegations, not findings.

Why did the FTC use the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in a payment processing case?

Count V charges Section 521 of the GLB Act, 15 U.S.C. 6821, the pretexting provision, whose subsection (a) is captioned 'Prohibition on obtaining customer information by false pretenses.' The prong charged covers obtaining customer information of a financial institution by making a false statement to one of that institution's customers. The complaint's theory is that the defendants collected merchants' bank account numbers, via a voided check, on the strength of the savings and risk-free claims. That count also supplies the monetary hook: the complaint traces Section 522(a) of the GLB Act and Section 814(a) of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to Section 19 of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 57b, which authorizes redress.

Why is there no ROSCA count in the Riverside complaint?

The public record does not say. The complaint has a section headed 'Defendants' Inadequately Disclosed Negative Option Terms' but pleads no count under the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, 15 U.S.C. 8403, which by its terms reaches charges for goods or services sold in a transaction effected on the Internet through a negative option feature. The auto-renewal conduct is charged under Section 5(a) of the FTC Act instead. Notably, Sections IV, V and VI of the proposed order would impose by consent the same three duties ROSCA imposes by statute: material-term disclosure before billing information, express informed consent, and a simple cancellation mechanism.

Are the small businesses in this case getting their money back?

The proposed order would create a $600,000 Merchant Redress Fund distributed pro rata by merchant processing volume over the six months before the order date, paid by ACH credit after the FTC approves a distribution plan. The draft notice says the refund arrives automatically whether or not a merchant cancels, and that amounts vary with account size. The complaint alleges the defendants have thousands of small business clients nationwide, so individual amounts would be a fraction of what any one merchant paid. Nothing is owed until a judge enters the order.

What did the complaint allege about Riverside's sales agent job ads?

Count IV alleges Riverside advertised on platforms including ZipRecruiter and Greenhouse that the commission-only sales agent role carried average yearly earnings of $75,000 to $95,000 and repeated similar figures in interview and training scripts. The complaint alleges that in 2024 the defendants paid $1,249,850.93 to 330 workers classified as 1099 contractors, an average of $3,787 for the year, and states that no sales agent earned six figures in 2023 or 2024. It pleads these earnings claims as false or unsubstantiated under Section 5(a).