(Reuters) – The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday dropped an enforcement action against the consumer credit bureau TransUnion, adding to the embattled agency’s mass dismissal of cases against financial companies accused of cheating consumers.
However, Russell Vought, the agency’s acting director, decided to continue a 2022 case against the fintech lender MoneyLion, according to a court filing. CFPB officials accuse MoneyLion of charging military service members illegally high interest rates and trapping borrowers in high-price memberships.
The CFPB had brought the TransUnion case in 2022, accusing the company and longtime executive John Danaher of violating a 2017 order against deceptive marketing practices.
The agency on Thursday also dismissed five other enforcement actions, including a case against Capital One.
Representatives for the CFPB, TransUnion and Danaher did not respond to requests for comment.
MoneyLion did not immediately respond to a Reuters email. MoneyLion has previously rejected CFPB’s allegations.
The agency has now dropped seven of its enforcement actions en masse, an unprecedented move, since President Donald Trump fired Rohit Chopra as the CFPB director late last month. The cases in question involved allegations that companies had cheated millions of consumers out of billions of dollars.
In at least one dismissed case, Vought, the acting director, said the agency’s enforcement had been “weaponized,” claiming that the case against online lender Solo Funds, which the CFPB last year had accused of illegally tricking borrowers into paying higher loan costs, had unfairly damaged a promising company.
Trump has said he expects to eliminate the CFPB, claiming without citing any evidence that it pursued politicized enforcement. The agency, however, has said in court papers that it will continue to exist in a “streamlined” form, a position refuted in sworn statements filed late Thursday by employees who claim to have witnessed planning for the CFPB’s outright termination.
(Reporting by Douglas Gillison and Mike Scarcella; Editing by Marguerita Choy and Leslie Adler)
