LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A payment processing company has been fined $6.5 million by a federal judge in Nevada for violating terms of a 2015 order.
Cliq, formerly known as Cardflex, and its operators — Andrew Phillips and John Blaugrund — were found in contempt of a 2015 federal court order designed to prevent the company from enabling consumer fraud. The company unlawfully processed hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions for merchants that were on Mastercard’s Member Alert To Control High-risk merchants (MATCH) list, according to a news release from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The FTC asked the court for sanctions of nearly $53 million, but U.S. District Court Judge Miranda Du reduced the fine to $6.5 million. Although Cliq’s actions facilitated consumer fraud, the company only collected “a fraction of the measure of consumer loss,” amounting to about $1.58 million in gross revenues. She ruled that Cliq and its operators were in contempt of the 2015 order…