The Federal Trade Commission began mailing checks totaling $1.7 million to 22,764 consumers who were defrauded by a group that used Web sites to falsely claim they could help consumers receive free government grant money.
The FTC settled with four of the defendants and won summary judgment against the remaining 25 individual and corporate defendants. According to the FTC, the site operators sold many products online, including Grant Connect, which they described as a “unique consumer-friendly U.S. government grant program that delivers all of the tools for the consumer to search multiple databases, write grant proposals and deliver polished plans…”
The sites also used images of the President and the American flag in an attempt to convince consumers that they were affiliated with the U.S. government, which they were not.
Both the settlement and the summary judgment order ban the defendants from selling grant-related products, among other things. The defendants also are banned from selling products or services with an automatically recurring fee.
The amount of money defrauded consumers receive will vary based on the amount they lost. Most consumers will recover nearly 80% of their total loss through the FTC's redress program. Refund checks must be cashed within 60 days of the date they are received.
