Banking & Credit Cards
How banks, credit cards, and payment systems work. Covers products, rates, fees, regulations, and what consumers need to know to navigate the banking system.
Latest in Banking & Credit Cards
The FTC says a bill-payment company bought search ads impersonating utilities, then added a fee of its own
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Medicare threw 157 laboratories out of the program, and one owner enrolled 14 labs that investigators could not find
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A Brooklyn day-care owner was sentenced to 76 months after billing Medicaid $64 million, with gold and cash seized from her home
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The SEC says a New Jersey man ran a $16 million Ponzi that took from a widow, two churches and a prayer group
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges against a New Jersey man and two companies he controlled, alleging he ran a Ponzi scheme...
More than half a million Globe Life customers can claim up to $5,072
American Income Life Insurance Company and its parent, Globe Life Inc., have opened a claims process tied to a data breach the companies disclosed after...
Nearly 5.8 million people notified of the 700Credit breach have until September 22 to claim from a $17.5 million fund
A settlement administrator has begun processing claims tied to a data security incident that 700Credit, LLC disclosed after detecting unauthorized access to its dealer-facing web...
A Virginia woman took $29,988 in Social Security from a dead man’s account
A Martinsville, Virginia, woman was ordered to repay nearly $30,000 in Social Security benefits and sentenced to two years of supervised release after pleading guilty...
A credit union board member is accused of emptying an elderly client’s account, then buying a pickup and a skid steer
A federal grand jury in Harrisburg indicted a Dover, Pennsylvania, man on charges that he persuaded an elderly woman and her power of attorney to...
Switching to the Repayment Assistance Plan costs borrowers the PSLF buyback and adds a decade to forgiveness
The Repayment Assistance Plan, the federal government’s newest income-driven option for federal student loans, took effect on July 1, 2026, becoming the default track for...
The SEC says a fake adviser promised 20 percent a month and took $940,000 from 16 clients, several elderly
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a fraud complaint on September 3 against Omar Dario Chavez, a Southern California resident accused of running a...
A payment processor is banned for life and will pay $12 million after handling money for shell merchants
The Federal Trade Commission filed a proposed order on September 8, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan that would...
Medicare cut off 11 equipment suppliers over $3.4 billion in suspect billing, including claims filed after patients died
A New Jersey durable medical equipment company billed a Medicare Advantage plan 38 separate times for a beneficiary who was already dead, listing dates of...
SAVE borrowers who pick nothing get moved to the standard plan with a payment due in October or November
Federal student loan servicers began mailing 90-day notices on July 1, 2026, to more than seven million borrowers still enrolled in the SAVE repayment plan,...
Regulators charged 38 firms with faking U.S. investment-adviser registrations to look legitimate to savers
Thirty-eight firms told the Securities and Exchange Commission they were legitimate, U.S.-registered investment advisers serving American savers, and on August 27 the agency filed civil...
Comcast stops taking claims on its $117.5 million data breach settlement September 14
A federal judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania granted final approval to a $117.5 million settlement over Comcast’s October 2023 data breach on August...
A payable-on-death beneficiary sends a bank account to heirs, skipping probate
A bank account does not have to sit tangled up in probate court for months before heirs can touch the money. Naming a payable-on-death beneficiary...
Report a fraudulent charge within 60 days to cap what you owe
Federal law caps how much a bank customer can be forced to pay for a fraudulent charge, but the size of that cap depends entirely...
Top certificates of deposit still pay close to 4%, a chance to lock in before the Fed meets September 16
The best certificates of deposit available nationally are still paying close to 4%, and for a saver deciding whether to lock in a rate now...
Regulators charged 38 operations that posed as registered U.S. investment advisers to reel in small investors
Federal regulators charged 38 entities that spent the past two years filing paperwork designed to look like a real investment advisory business, a scheme the...
Regulators charged a California fund chief with an $80 million Ponzi that pulled in nearly 190 investors, many retired
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the former chief executive of a Novato, California, real estate lending firm with running an offering fraud that...