Three Florida Attorneys Facing Class Action Lawsuit Over Allegedly Fraudulent Student Loan Resolution Services [UPDATE: DISMISSED]

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Florida attorneys Kevin Mason, Chantel Grant, Stuart Goldberg and two law firms, Kevin Mason, P.A. and GM Law Firm, LLC, are the identified defendants in a proposed class action lawsuit in which the plaintiff claims the parties have committed legal malpractice, among other suspected violations, in the course of offering supposedly fraudulent private student loan resolution services that were improperly solicited to proposed class members.

The lawsuit outright alleges the “private student loan debt resolution program” the defendants offer to consumers—particularly those struggling to repay their Navient-serviced private student loans—does not exist. Consumers who agree to participate in the defendants’ purported program, the case charges, unknowingly agree to pay the attorneys and the law firm defendants, which are owned by Mason and Grant, “50% of their total private student loan balance, in monthly payments, for 60 months.” The complaint claims these payments are not applied in any way to proposed class members’ student loan debts, and are instead pocketed by the defendants as profit. 

“[The defendants’] web of relationships, and the arrangements between them, funneled unjust and unearned profits and/or other illicit benefits to the defendants through their collusive activities,” the complaint reads. “Each defendant participated in the scheme with the knowledge and collusion of the other participants, as described in greater detail in this complaint.”

After laying out more than a dozen online complaints from consumers decrying the services supposedly offered by the defendants, the lawsuit gets into allegations that the plaintiff was improperly solicited by the defendants before signing in April 2015 an engagement letter that established an attorney-client relationship with Goldberg and his law firm. In October 2015, the lawsuit continues, the plaintiff was sent, without explanation, a “Limited Scope Legal Services Agreement” in which he would enter with Mason and his law firm. This agreement, the complaint argues, is “an unlawful, unconscionable, and unethical attorney-client contract,” in that it reportedly gives Mason and his firm complete settlement authority over the plaintiff’s account.

At some point, the case continues, Grant and GM Law Firm became the attorneys for the plaintiff and members of the proposed class.

“It is not clear why, how, or when this occurred,” the lawsuit states.

Perhaps the worst of the claims presented in the lawsuit stems from the defendants’ alleged communications with proposed class members indicating that the purported debt resolution program was operating as it should be:

“While [the defendants] continued to line their pockets, their clients, like [the plaintiff], and class members were forced to pay for the performance of no legitimate legal services, as promised, and they were further duped into paying these monthly charges, on auto draft, by bi-weekly ‘follow up’ emails from the National Legal Staff Support (whatever that is) that represented to [the plaintiff] and class members that their private student loan accounts were up-to-date, not delinquent, not reported as negative accounts on their credit reports with the major credit-reporting bureaus (Equifax, TransUnion, Experian), and that everything in the so-called ‘settlement program’ was going fine.”

The full complaint can be read below.