A Virginia firm must pay $3 million for illegally taking millions of dollars from more than a half-million accounts and blocking money transfers to consumers who are incarcerated, according to charges made public by Thursday by the federal consumer financial protection agency.
Global Tel Link Corporation (GTL) of Falls Church, Va., allegedly profited by taking funds from inactive accounts and blocking money transfers from friends and family used to pay for basic needs (such as food, medicine, and clothing) of prisoners), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said.
In a consent order reached with GTL – doing business as (d/b/a) ViaPath Technologies (“Global Tel Link”) – and its subsidiaries Telmate, LLC, d/b/a ViaPath Technologies (‘Telmate’), and TouchPay Holdings, LLC, d/b/a GTL Financial Services (‘TouchPay’), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said the firm must pay at least $2 million in redress to victims and a $1 million penalty to the CFPB’s victims relief fund.
In addition, the company must stop blocking accounts, stop seizing funds from inactive unified accounts, and properly disclose fees, the bureau said.
According to the CFPB, GTL and its companies contract with correctional facilities across the country to provide various products and services, including money transfer services, to incarcerated people and their family and friends. The agency asserted that friends and family use the services to deposit money into an incarcerated person’s account; the funds may then be used to pay for items in the correctional facility’s commissary. GTL and Telmate also provide accounts to pay for telephone services, online messaging, and video visitation, the CFPB said.
“GTL is often the sole provider of money transfer services in the correctional facilities where it operates,” the CFPB said. “It has a ‘no-refund’ policy for money transfers, with limited exceptions, which makes it difficult for friends and family to resolve errors such as duplicate transactions or funds sent to the wrong type of account. As a result, these consumers may file chargebacks with their own financial institutions to try to recover their funds. In some cases, GTL’s own customer service representatives instruct consumers to file chargebacks. In response, GTL in many cases blocks the account of the person who is incarcerated from receiving additional transfers via credit card or debit card until someone repays the amount of the chargeback and, in some cases in the past, an additional fee.”
The bureau added that, between 2019 and 2023, GTL and Telmate emptied funds from certain consumer accounts after a period of inactivity without sufficiently notifying the consumers. The companies also failed to disclose complete fee schedules for money transfers.