The Attorney General is the state’s chief consumer advocate, and she works tirelessly to protect Illinois consumers.
Attorney General Lisa Madigan has taken on corporate giants and stood up to special interests in Illinois. She has fought utility companies that have unjustly overbilled customers and engaged in unfair business practices, recovering over a billion dollars for ratepayers. When the Illinois Legislature permitted utility companies to use a new rate-setting process called Reverse-Auction that promised to result in Illinois consumers being overcharged for power, the Attorney General filed numerous lawsuits to end the deceitful practice. After winning a lawsuit against Com Ed, Attorney General Madigan negotiated the creation of a new power-buying agency that buys electricity in bulk. Because the Attorney General stood up to ComEd and Ameren, electricity bills for Illinois consumers dropped by $1 billion.
Attorney General Madigan also initiated a new law that strengthens and reforms the ethics rules of the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) – the group that sets the energy prices that Illinois consumers pay for energy. These ethic reforms protect consumers by prohibiting private meetings between the ICC Commissioners and utility companies. The new law also promotes energy efficiency and assists low-income families with utility bills.
Moreover, Lisa Madigan has been at the forefront of the battle to fight fraud by cell phone companies. She was one of the first attorneys general in the country to file suit against cell phone companies who were selling their clients’ phone records. Attorney General Madigan also testified before Congress about the threat to privacy posed by this practice. Additionally, she participated in the negotiation of an agreement with three major cell phone carriers to allow consumers to have a greater ability to terminate their contracts without penalty.
Attorney General Madigan is working diligently to end the abusive and unfair practices of debt settlement operators who take advantage of Illinois residents in financial distress. Madigan has worked with State lawmakers to enact a new law to protect consumers from the abusive practices of the debt settlement industry. In most cases, these practices result in consumers owing more than their original credit card debt as a result of excessive upfront fees, increased months of missed payments to creditors, and added penalties on their credit reports. As a result of Lisa Madigan’s work on this issue, Illinois now has the toughest debt settlement law in the country. She has received national recognition from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling for her groundbreaking work to protect consumers by tracking down abusive debt settlement companies and by promoting finical awareness and literacy.
Several years ago, when it became clear that mortgage lenders were placing unsuspecting Illinois homeowners into loans that they did not understand, could not afford and had no realistic way to repay, Attorney General Madigan took immediate and aggressive action to bring relief to homeowners facing foreclosure. In October 2008, she negotiated a landmark settlement against Countrywide, the nation’s largest mortgage lender, for predatory mortgage lending and fraud. The Countrywide settlement, hailed as a model nationwide, pioneered the country’s first mandatory loan modification program. As a result of this settlement, approximately 400,000 homeowners across the country are expected to receive modifications of their loans with a total savings of $8.7 billion. That means approximately 21,000 Illinois homeowners will receive consideration for loan adjustments, from which $185 million in modifications are expected.
Attorney General Madigan did not stop at just predatory lenders. In the wake of the foreclosure crisis, many scam artists have attempted to swindle money from homeowners who are behind on their mortgages by making big promises to assist with mortgage modifications, collecting a large up-front fee and then doing nothing to help the homeowners. In response, Attorney General Madigan drafted the Mortgage Rescue Fraud Prevention Act, which is now law. She has used this new law to crack down on these fraudulent mortgage “rescuers” with investigations and lawsuits, filing 31 lawsuits targeting mortgage rescue scams.
Finally, with Attorney General Lisa Madigan at the helm, Illinois has also been among the most proactive states in responding to identity theft. Illinois has enacted laws giving victims of identity theft the option of placing a freeze on their credit reports, requiring data collectors to notify consumers in the event that the security of their personal information has been breached and mandating police to take reports of identity theft from victims. Attorney General Madigan’s Identity Theft Hotline (1-866-999-5630), the first of its kind in the nation, helps identity theft victims through every step of the reporting and recovery process.
Whether through investigations, litigation or legislation, Attorney General Madigan has fought for consumers and against fraudulent business practices across the State.
