DALLAS – MoneyGram International, Inc. (NASDAQ: MGI), responded to the meritless civil lawsuit filed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the New York Attorney General and baseless claims issued by the CFPB and its director. The Company issued the following statement:
As the industry leader in compliance and consumer protection, MoneyGram is deeply disappointed that the CFPB and NYAG chose to file yesterday’s meritless lawsuit and that the CFPB chose to issue two press releases littered with gratuitous and inaccurate statements about the Company and the allegations in the case. The Company is fully prepared to vigorously defend itself and expose the meritless nature of the lawsuit in court.
MoneyGram cares deeply about its customers and is committed to consumer protection. Over the past decade, the Company has invested more than $800 million to enhance its compliance program and doubled the size of its compliance team to build a best-in-class program with record-low consumer fraud complaints. MoneyGram also created a Compliance and Ethics Committee of the Board of Directors that actively oversees the Company’s compliance function, and the Company continuously implements enhancements to ensure that it meets and exceeds industry best practices.
Notably, just last year the U.S. Department of Justice recognized the Company’s compliance program when it terminated its deferred prosecution agreement and dismissed old claims against the Company. This result occurred shortly after an independent corporate compliance monitor conducted a lengthy review of MoneyGram’s compliance program and certified that the Company’s “anti-fraud and anti-money laundering compliance program, including its policies and procedures, are reasonably designed and implemented to detect and prevent fraud and money laundering and to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act.” Additionally, just last month we reached an agreement with the New York Department of Financial Services to settle a legacy issue. In connection with the settlement, the NYDFS commended MoneyGram for its cooperation and for undertaking significant enhancements to our compliance program and remediation to prevent similar violations from occurring.
We spent considerable time attempting to educate the CFPB and NYAG about our robust and effective compliance efforts and the weakness of their case, including their failure to show any actual consumer harm. In fact, over the past two years, MoneyGram fully cooperated with the CFPB’s inquiries and produced tens of thousands of documents. More recently, we proactively engaged with the NYAG to educate them on the facts after they joined the CFPB’s case. The Company attempted, in good faith, to negotiate a reasonable resolution, but faced only unreasonable and unprecedented demands in return. In the end, the Company refused to be strong-armed into an unfair settlement and MoneyGram was given no choice but to litigate this matter and to defend itself in court.
In connection with the filing of yesterday’s complaint, the CFPB director unfortunately chose to issue two press releases that made gratuitous and unfounded public remarks against the Company. However, the actual allegations in the complaint fail to live up to the hyperbolic statements about the Company. In contrast to the CFPB’s public statements, the complaint itself alleges only technical and time-barred infractions of the Remittance Rule and Regulation E and fails to demonstrate any consumer harm or programmatic non-compliance in this regard.
MoneyGram stands behind its compliance program and its treatment of customers – as demonstrated by our strong customer experience scores, 4.9-star rated app, consumer trust ratings and remarkably high customer retention rates. We look forward to vigorously defending our compliance program and commitment to consumers in court.
Source: MoneyGram
