American Express settles two federal lawsuits for over $230 million dollars.

[IsambardPrince]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/your-money/american-express-fines-credit-cards.html

American Express settled civil and criminal allegations filed by the federal government to cover deceptive business practices, which included inventing false EIN numbers for small business credit cards and for deceiving customers into thinking they could get tax deductions for wire transfer fees which were much higher than the industry average, but generated membership rewards points.

The company agreed to pay $230 million in fines and restitution.

Another article I saw put at least $64 million of this amount as remunerating the government for lost tax revenue, and the rest mostly seems to be punitive.

[Varsity_Lu]

Anyone blacklisting AmEx for this, or are we ok with this one?

[pizzadude]

In case NYT is paywalled here is a link to the DOJ website with details on the allegations & settlement:   https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/american-express-agrees-pay-more-138-million-resolve-wire-fraud...

[IsambardPrince]

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@Varsity_Lu wrote:

Anyone blacklisting AmEx for this, or are we ok with this one?

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Well, we don't have any small business credit cards with them so have not been affected. 

However, if someone got me in trouble with the IRS by giving me bogus tax advice as a way to grease their otherwise egregious banking fees and it wasn't even really my fault that the IRS initiated an audit, I'd be furious.

[AzCreditGuy]

Blacklisted from Amex for perosnal and they did Buss as well and I never had a Buss CC, this is comical to hear about 

[Lou-natic]

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@Varsity_Lu wrote:

Anyone blacklisting AmEx for this, or are we ok with this one?

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Doesn't seem to affect me at all as far as I can tell. I think I've done something like 2 wire transfers my entire life and my AMEX business cards are "sole prop" type so not a problem there either.