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CHICAGO (CN) — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has tossed its almost three-year-old regulatory enforcement lawsuit against credit reporting agency TransUnion, according to a court stipulation published Friday morning.
The bureau and the agency say in the joint stipulation that the bureau is voluntarily dismissing its federal complaint against both TransUnion and John Danaher, one of its executives.
The bureau sought a “pause” in the case earlier this month, citing President Donald Trump’s shakeup of its leadership.
“On or about February 1, 2025, the President removed the prior director of the bureau from his position. On February 3, 2025, counsel for the bureau was instructed not to make or approve filings in any appearances in litigation except to seek a pause in proceedings,” the bureau wrote in a Feb. 4 joint status report to the court.
The bureau first filed the lawsuit in April 2022 in Chicago’s federal court. It claimed the action was necessary after TransUnion and Danaher failed to heed the watchdog agency’s 2017 warning to stop their what the bureau said were deceptive practices — practices the agency said had been ongoing since 2011.
In an April 2022 statement that accompanied the federal suit, the bureau accused the Chicago-based TransUnion, along with its subsidiaries TransUnion LLC and TransUnion Interactive, of utilizing “dark patterns” to keep up its multibillion dollar revenue stream.
The agency described such patterns as “hidden tricks or trapdoors companies build into their websites to get consumers to inadvertently click links, sign up for subscriptions, or purchase products or services.”
Specifically, the bureau claimed that the credit agencies deceptively enticed people looking to use TransUnion’s credit monitoring and reporting services to join a paid subscription service that was difficult to leave.
The bureau argued in its complaint that TransUnion marketed “trial” subscriptions for its services that were free or only cost a dollar, but in reality automatically enrolled cardholders in a paid monthly service that could only be canceled by the customers directly contacting TransUnion to opt out of it.
The price of TransUnion’s credit monitoring subscription service, according to the agency’s own website, is currently $29.95 per month plus applicable tax.
The bureau also accused TraunsUnion of misrepresenting the type of credit report it was providing to its customers. The agency’s so-called VantageScores — developed jointly by it and the two other major U.S. credit agencies Experian and Equifax — are not always the credit scores that lenders use when evaluating an individual’s creditworthiness. The most commonly used credit scoring model in the U.S. as of 2024 is the FICO score developed by the Fair Isaac Corporation.
“Corporate defendants falsely represented that the credit scores they marketed and sold to consumers were the same scores lenders typically use to determine creditworthiness, when, in reality, the scores used to determine creditworthiness by lenders and other commercial users were highly unlikely to be the scores sold to consumers by corporate defendants,” the bureau said in its complaint.
The bureau said it reached a settlement with TransUnion in 2017 over charges the agency was “deceptively marketing credit scores and credit-related products, including credit monitoring services.”
The bureau claimed TransUnion agreed to pay $13.9 million in restitution to victims and $3 million in civil penalties as part of that settlement, and further agreed to a binding law enforcement order that required it to warn consumers that lenders are not likely to use VantageScore, to obtain customers’ express consent over recurring payments for its subscription services, to make it easy for customers to cancel their subscriptions.
TransUnion acknowledges that its VantageScore is not the only credit reporting model on its website as of Friday, stating lenders “are likely to use a credit score different” from VantageScore to assess a person’s credit.
However, in its 2022 complaint, the bureau claimed it found TransUnion violating its settlement order by May 2019. In an amended complaint the bureau filed in May 2023, it claimed these violations had continued, with Danaher’s knowledge, into 2022.
The bureau put out a public statement this past Feb. 3 stating Trump had designated Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — also a Trump donor — as its new acting director.
The statement made no mention of the bureau’s prior director Rohit Chopra.
It was widely reported that right wing political operative Russel Vought, one of the architects of the Project 2025 policy agenda, took over as the bureau’s acting director on Feb. 7, though this change is not reflected on the bureau’s website.
Vought reportedly ordered bureau personnel to stop much of their work, including to cease supervision activity and to refrain from making or approving any litigation filings — except to seek pauses in proceedings.
An attorney for the bureau in the TransUnion case did not return Courthouse News’ request for comment.
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