The Federal Trade Commission will issue over $5 million in refunds to 7,687 victims of the credit card debt relief scheme ACRO Services, the organization announced Tuesday. ACRO Services — which also operated under the names American Consumer Rights Organization, Consumer Protection Resources, Reliance Solutions, Thacker & Associates and Tri Star Consumer Group — ran a sophisticated telemarketing scheme which promised it could greatly reduce or eliminate customers’ credit card debt within 12 to 18 months, according to a lawsuit filed by the FTC in November 2022. The company charged customers a hefty enrollment fee and $25-30 monthly “credit monitoring” fees, amassing millions of dollars worth of stolen funds and leaving some in even deeper debt, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit’s defendants — Sean Austin, John Steven Huffman and John Preston Thompson, who operated ACRO and several similar schemes — agreed to a settlement order that banned them from the telemarketing and debt relief industries and required them to surrender assets to be used to finance refunds to impacted customers. The refunds also came from a lawsuit the FTC filed against BlueSnap, a payment processing company which the FTC claimed knowingly processed the fraudulent deposits collected by ACRO. Consumers should cash their refund checks within 90 days of receiving the check. Customers with questions about their refund should contact the refund administrator, JND Legal Administration, at 877-753-2846, or visit the FTC website.