A couple million dollars’ worth of refunds have started being distributed to customers of online stock trading website Raging Bull, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced Monday.
In a press release, the FTC said the total amount of money the agency is sending to the affected Raging Bull customers comes out to almost $2.4 million. More than 9,800 people who bought subscriptions for the online stock trading website will receive those funds via PayPal, according to the commission.
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The thousands of refunds come roughly one year after the FTC announced a settlement agreement with Raging Bull. The order was in connection to allegations that the online stock trading website had “used bogus earnings claims to trick people into paying for investment strategies and recommendations, and then trapped them into hard-to-cancel subscription plans with costly fees,” the FTC said.
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The FTC alleged in the 2020 complaint that the defendants in the case “represent[ed], directly or indirectly, expressly or by implication, that consumers who purchase Raging Bull’s services will earn or are likely to earn substantial income,” characterizations that were purportedly “false, misleading, or were not substantiated at the time the representations were made.”
FOX Business reached out to Raging Bull for comment.
The company called the FTC’s claims “baseless” and characterized the settlement as a “total vindication” in a March 2022 post on the Raging Bull website. It also said there wasn’t “any admission of liability” in the settlement.
Provisions of the settlement with the FTC involved the barring of Raging Bull from making earnings claims without data to back it up and the required offering of an “easy method to cancel their subscriptions,” among other things, according to the FTC.
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For the Raging Bull refunds, the deadline to accept the PayPal payment is 30 days after receipt, the FTC said Monday. Those who would rather get the refund in the form of a check can request that by calling the commission’s refund administrator.
The FTC reported $133 as the median refund amount in the case.