More than $37 million in tech support scam transactions were processed over three years.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has ordered UK-based payment processor Paddle and its U.S. subsidiary to pay a $5 million penalty to resolve its alleged screening and fraud prevention lapses.
These reportedly allowed credit card system exploitation by tech support firms Restoro, Reimage, and PC Vark, reports BleepingComputer.
More than $37 million in tech support scam transactions have been processed by Paddle for Restoro and Reimage between April 2020 and June 2023, while $12.5 million have been processed for PC Vark, according to the FTC, which also accused Paddle of being an unregistered payment facilitator and aggregator that was nonadherent to rules set by Visa and Mastercard.
Aside from the $5 million fine, Paddle has also been prohibited from tech support telemarketer payment processing and fraud detection circumvention activities. The FTC has also mandated Paddle to evaluate clients and report their activities, as well as declare subscription terms and secure informed consent from clients.
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Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
