SEATTLE (AP) — Washington-based people-search company Intelius Inc. has agreed to pay $1.3 million to settle allegations that thousands of its customers were charged for services they didn’t know they’d signed up for.
State Attorney General Rob McKenna says many of the customers thought they were paying less than $5 to look up contact information through Intelius websites such as www.peoplelookup.com, but they wound up being charged about $20 per month for credit-protection services.
In some cases people were charged by Intelius, and in other cases they were charged by a third-party vendor.
The settlement includes $300,000 in legal fees and $1 million to reimburse customers in Washington. McKenna says attorneys general in other states may be going after Intelius to get money back for customers in those states.
Intelius says it will comply with the settlement. The company did not admit wrongdoing. The agreement restricts it from engaging in similar marketing activities in the future.
