The Federal Trade Commission’s law enforcement actions resulted in $337.3 million in refunds to consumers in 2024.
That total included $280.7 million in refunds directly from the FTC, with the remainder being returned to consumers by the defendants or other federal agencies administering the refund programs, the FTC said in its annual report on refunds to consumers released Friday (March 14).
FTC payments were cashed by 3.1 million people during the year, according to the report.
“Getting money back for people across the country is a top priority for the FTC,” Chris Mufarrige, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a Friday press release. “We will relentlessly pursue refunds for Americans who lost money to unlawful practices.”
The 2024 total was up from the $324 million in refunds to consumers that resulted from FTC lawsuits in 2023.
The FTC uses different payment methods to reach consumers, including paper checks and electronic payments, according to the report.
In 2024, the agency used Zelle for the first time. The FTC did so to reach additional Amazon Flex drivers who were owed a payment from the agency’s 2021 settlement with Amazon, per the report.
“The distribution resulted in 2,806 successful payments, increasing participation from 90.3% to 92.3% of eligible drivers,” the FTC said in the annual report. “To date, 130,952 Amazon Flex drivers have received full compensation totaling more than $58.5 million.”
Among the cases with first distributions in 2024, the one with the largest amount of money sent involved $99.3 million being sent to more than 463,000 consumers, according to the report.
That case involved Benefytt Technologies, a company that agreed to a settlement in a case in which the FTC alleged that the company and its third-party partners led consumers to believe they were buying comprehensive health insurance plans qualified under the Affordable Care Act, when in fact the plans were not ACA-qualified and lacked key elements.
The case with the second-largest amount of money returned involved Epic Games and saw $72 million returned to consumers.
In that case, a settlement resolved the FTC’s allegations that Epic Games, the maker of the video game Fortnite, tricked consumers into making unwanted purchases.
