AT&T Owes $105M For Bogus Charges

The Federal Trade Commission ordered AT&T to pay $105 million for unlawfully billing customers hundreds of millions of dollars in a sham charges. The practice, known as cramming, produced fees generally around $9.99 a month that were listed as "AT&T Monthly Subscriptions." As a result, they were not easy for consumers to detect, according to the complaint. Over 1.3 million consumers complained about the charges in 2011, but the FTC says AT&T kept at least 35 percent of the unauthorized charges. "This should have and, in fact, did ring alarm bells at AT&T," said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. “But instead of acting to stop the charges, AT&T continued to make hundreds of millions of dollars from the practice." Of the settlement AT&T is ordered to pay to the FTC, $80 million will go to consumer refunds.