Home Consumer FTC mailing out refund checks in Bogus Health Insurance Scam

FTC mailing out refund checks in Bogus Health Insurance Scam

By Al Sunshine, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Consumer Investigator, Sept. 30, 2015 – Uncle Sam may have money back for you as part of a huge Million Dollar Settlement into a phony health insurance company. Per the FTC: “The Federal Trade Commission is mailing 6,832 checks totaling more than $1.1 million to consumers who lost money to a health insurance scam.”

The case goes back to 2012, and alleges consumers who signed up never got the insurance they thought they were buying, just a worthless membership into what the FTC calls “an obscure trade group”.

“In 2012, the FTC charged the Independent Association of Businesses (IAB) and Health Service Providers (HSP) defendants with violating the FTC Act and the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule by deceiving consumers seeking comprehensive health insurance. Instead of health coverage, consumers received membership in IAB, an obscure trade association that provided purported discounts on services such as identity-theft protection, travel, and roadside assistance, and some healthcare related benefits that were subject to broad exclusions and limitations.”

Here’s more info or contact the FTC’s Refund administrator at Gilardi & Co. at 1-877-255-2476.

 

Al Sunshine is a South Florida-based Broadcast and Digital Journalist whose career has spanned more than 40 years at the local and national levels. His award-winning investigations have triggered more than a dozen state and local consumer protection laws and his work’s been cited in Congressional Testimony before the U-S House of Representatives. He is best known for his “Shame On You” features for CBS Miami which sought to expose businesses, agencies and individuals defrauding or deceiving consumers, as well as endangering the safety and welfare of the general public. In 2013 Al retired from CBS Miami to set up his own Digital News Business, “Sunshine News, LLC” and Al continues to blog for the Radio, Television, Digital News Association, sponsors of the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Awards”. An avid environmentalist, Al is one of the founding members of the “Miami Pine Rocklands Coalition”. The Florida Non-Profit is fighting to save and restore the last 2% of Pine Rocklands found only in South Florida and nowhere else in the continental United States. Al was recently elected its President.