Online career-training company, Career Step, LLC has been ordered to pay $43.5 million in debt cancellation and cash to resolve charges brought by the Federal Trade Commission that alleged the company lured consumers, specifically servicemembers and their families, with deceptive ads that falsely touted inflated employment outcomes, job placement, and partnerships with prominent companies.
Career Step will pay $27.8 million in debt cancellation and $15.7 million in cash that will be used to provide redress to consumers who were harmed by its deceptive advertising.
“Servicemembers and their families make sacrifices every day to protect our freedoms,” said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “We owe it to them to make sure that when they look to use their hard-earned benefits to further their education, they get facts and not fantasy.”
According to the FTC’s complaint, Georgia-based company Career Step (also doing business as CareerStep, CareerCert, and Carrus), promotes career training and certification programs for jobs in the healthcare industry, targeting servicemembers and their spouses. The complaint states that since at least 2019, Career Step has lured servicemembers with deceptive advertising on social media and on its website, where it markets its programs, using sales representatives and AI technology to persuade consumers to enroll. The company has also marketed its services through military-focused publications, such as Military.com, and through events sponsored by the military, including job fairs. Specifically, Career Step has made false claims about job placement and outcomes, externships, hiring partnerships, and the duration of its programs, with the help of deceptive incentivized reviews it uses to promote its services.
The FTC’s complaint says that Career Step representatives have falsely promised to find jobs for consumers. For example, Career Step representatives have claimed that the “career placement team” will step in and find consumers the “perfect job.” In reality, Career Step does not provide any job placement. Career Step’s job search assistance is limited to help with resume-drafting or emailing links to job postings generally available on the internet.
The complaint says the company has also represented that “most learners” and “more than 80% of its graduates,” or program-completers, are employed in their field of study. Career Step’s employment outcome claims are based entirely on an optional survey sent only to consumers who have completed their program. But most participants never complete their program at all and never even receive a survey. Of the consumers that do receive a survey, most never respond. For instance, out of the 9,330 enrollees and 2,126 program-completers from a 2020 survey, only 5% of enrollees or 24% of program-completers completed the survey, representing a small pool of consumers.
Career Step’s website has claimed falsely that it has partnerships with leading businesses in the healthcare industry to provide jobs for its graduates, according to the complaint. Career Step prominently featured the logos of well-known “Hiring Partners” like CVS and Walgreens on its homepage, and the company’s sales representatives have told consumers, “We have over 50,000 partnerships so we’ll help you find some place to work.” In reality, Career Step’s agreements, including with companies like CVS and Walgreens, have nothing to do with job placement after graduation.
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