{"id":1100,"date":"2013-02-07T16:39:34","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T21:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/?p=1100"},"modified":"2013-02-07T16:39:34","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T21:39:34","slug":"ftc-settlement-tax-relief-scammers-agree-to-pay-more-than-15-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/?p=1100","title":{"rendered":"FTC Settlement: Tax Relief Scammers Agree to Pay More Than $15 Million<\/a>"},"content":{"rendered":"

American Tax Relief Scheme Bilked Consumers With False Promises They Qualified for IRS Programs to Reduce Tax Debts<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Under an agreement with the\u00a0 Federal Trade Commission, the defendants in a scheme that allegedly bilked\u00a0 consumers out of more than $100 million by falsely claiming they could reduce\u00a0 their tax debts must surrender more than $15 million in cash and assets to\u00a0 settle charges that they violated federal law.\u00a0\u00a0 Under the settlement order, American Tax Relief LLC and its leader,\u00a0 Alexander Seung Hahn<\/a>, are banned from telemarketing, and they and Hahn’s wife,\u00a0 Joo Hyun Park, are permanently prohibited from selling debt relief\u00a0 services.\u00a0 As part of the FTC’s ongoing efforts to protect consumers in financial distress<\/a>,\u00a0 this is the agency’s first action against a tax relief company.<\/p>\n

The FTC filed charges against\u00a0 American Tax Relief, Hahn, and Park<\/a> in September 2010.\u00a0 A court subsequently halted the allegedly\u00a0 illegal practices, froze the defendants’ assets, and appointed a receiver to\u00a0 manage the company pending resolution of the case.<\/p>\n

In August 2012, the court entered\u00a0 partial summary judgment in favor of the FTC, finding that the defendants falsely\u00a0 claimed they already had significantly reduced the tax debts of thousands of\u00a0 people and falsely told individual consumers they qualified for tax relief programs\u00a0 that would significantly reduce their tax debts.\u00a0 The court found Hahn personally liable for\u00a0 the challenged practices.<\/p>\n

The settlement order imposes a\u00a0 $103.3 million judgment against ATR, Hahn, and <\/em>Joo HyunPark.\u00a0 It also imposes judgments of $18 million and\u00a0 $595,000, respectively, against relief defendants <\/em>Young Soon Park and Il Kon Park, Joo Park’s parents, who\u00a0 were not charged with participating in the scheme but were found by the court\u00a0 to have received significant sums.\u00a0 The\u00a0 judgments will be suspended oncethe defendants and relief defendants have surrendered\u00a0 assets that total more than $15 million, including cash<\/em>, a home in\u00a0 Beverly Hills and a condo in Los Angeles, jewelry and gold items, and a 2005\u00a0 Ferrari.\u00a0 The full judgments will become due immediately if the defendants or\u00a0 relief defendants are found to have misrepresented their financial condition.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

The\u00a0 order also prohibits ATR, Hahn, and Park from misrepresenting material facts\u00a0 about any products or services, collecting payments from the scheme’s customers,\u00a0 selling or otherwise benefitting from customers’ personal information, and\u00a0 failing to properly dispose of customer information.<\/p>\n

The Commission\u00a0 vote to approve the proposed stipulated final judgment was 5-0.\u00a0 The stipulated final judgment was entered by the U.S. District Court for the Central\u00a0 District of California on January 29, 2013.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Federal Trade Commission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Tax Relief Scheme Bilked Consumers With False Promises They Qualified for IRS Programs to Reduce Tax Debts Under an agreement with the\u00a0 Federal Trade Commission, the defendants in a scheme that allegedly bilked\u00a0 consumers out of more than $100 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[204],"class_list":["post-1100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-federal-trade-commission"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1100"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1103,"href":"https:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1100\/revisions\/1103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoorfarlaw.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}