Debt Relief Operator Fined and Banned from the Industry

This month, Kevin W. Guice, has been permanently banned from the telemarketing and debt relief industries. The Federal Trade Commission and Florida Attorney General accused Guice of founding and running a massive debt relief scam that made over $23 million from more than 10,000 consumers until June of 2016. “Guice bombarded consumers with illegal robocalls and tricked them into paying thousands of dollars for worthless credit card debt reduction services,” said Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Working with our partners in the Florida AG’s office, we were able to bring Guice to justice and stop this massive fraud.” It was discovered that the scam operation used two telemarketing companies and 11 shell companies all working together to sell fraudulent debt relief services. Guice concealed his involvement while working out of a boiler room in Orlando. The telemarketers called consumers with millions of robocalls, including numbers listed on the National Do Not Call Registry. The telemarketers used aliases of Bank Card Services and Credit Assistance Program and falsely claimed to be licensed enrollment center for major credit card networks like MasterCard and Visa. They promised consumers that they would permanently and substantially lower interest rates. Then the consumers were charged illegal up-front fees between $500 and $5,00 for the services but consumers did not receive the permanent and substantial interest reductions they were promised. The other scam Guice ran was a false credit card debt elimination service that claimed that they could access funds from the government or from a lawsuit against the credit card industry to pay off consumers’ credit card debt, which was not true and there were no funds or such a legal case. The consumers paid between $2,500 and $26,000 up front and ended up deeper in debt, with damaged credit scores, higher interest rates and late fees.