“Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson today filed a lawsuit against a Texas company—Apex Merchant Group, LLC (“Apex”)—for using “bait and switch” tactics through which it promised small businesses it could save them money on credit card processing services, then hit them with higher undisclosed fees. In some cases, Apex fraudulently altered the terms of signed contracts by later inserting new pages into the contract that contained higher rates and/or cancellation fees not agreed to by the small business, locking them into long-term contracts”.http://www.ag.state.mn.us/Consumer/PressRelease/20141015CreditCardService.asp
The foregoing are allegations only.
“In 2002, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) filed a lawsuit against a seller of credit card processing services, Certified Merchant Services, that was co-owned by Craig Frankel, one of Apex’s investors and brother to Apex’s current CEO, Andrew Frankel. Not unlike the allegations in today’s lawsuit against Apex, the FTC’s lawsuit alleged that the company made misrepresentations and fraudulently altered its customers’ contracts. Ultimately, in the FTC case, Certified Merchant Services was ordered to shut down”.
“The FTC filed its complaint in February 2002 against Certified Merchant Services, Ltd.; Certified Merchant GP, Inc.; Certified Merchant Services, Inc., and CMS-LP (collectively CMS); and Jonathan Frankel, Craig Frankel, and Randall Best of Plano, Texas. The companies also did business under the names Transaction Merchant Services (TMS), Transaction Merchant Services.Com, and Electrocheck. Jonathan Frankel and Craig Frankel were both officers and directors of CMS. The Commission amended its complaint in June 2002. Defendant Best settled the Commission’s amended complaint separately. In both settlements, the defendants neither admitted nor denied the allegations of the amended complaint.”
Probably just a coincidence.