Kraninger Files First Lawsuit as Head of the CFPB

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), has filed a lawsuit seeking to enforce a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) against the Law Offices of Crystal Moroney, (LOCM) a debt collection law firm. It is the first CFPB lawsuit since Kathy Kraninger became the director of the agency.   

The CFPB claims that the law firm is withholding information from the agency, which would be a direct violation of a 2017 administrative subpoena, according to the CFPB. The CID is part of an investigation to determine whether debt collectors or furnishers of information to credit bureaus have been engaged in unfair, deceptive or abusive acts or practices.

The original CID was submitted to LOCM in June 2017, when Richard Cordray was the director of the CFPB. The CID was broad in nature, asking “the firm to respond to 21 interrogatories, seven requests for written reports, 15 requests for documents and four requests for ‘tangible things’ by July 21 of that year.”

LOCM refused to comply with the CID because the firm’s “principal would be breaking professional responsibility rules in the states of New York and New Jersey” if it did so, according to the CFPB. In addition, the firm argued that to comply with the CID, it would take “22,500 hours to produce information from 500,000 telephone calls recorded over an 18-month period,” according to reports.