The owners of several adult entertainment web sites have agreed
to pay the sum of $30 million to settle charges that they
fraudulently advertised services as free, but charged site visitors
recurring monthly fees of between $20 and $90. The site owners also
billed individuals who had never even visited the sites.
In August 2000, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the New
York Attorney General filed a lawsuit against the owners of
playgirl.com and 64 affiliated corporations running dozens of
similar sites. The "Free Tour Web Sites" claimed that visitors’
credit card numbers were required solely to prove that the visitors
were of legal age to view the adult material, and stated that the
credit cards would not be billed. Visitors complained, however,
that their cards were billed despite the representations, and other
consumers were billed even though they did not visit the web
sites.
Those who tried to dispute the charges were met with a variety
of barriers designed by the site owners to thwart their efforts.
According to the FTC, the site owners used billing names different
than the names of the web sites, so consumers often had no idea who
was billing them or why - and contacting those behind the billing
names proved very difficult.
The settlement bars the illegal practices in the future, and
requires that those behind the scams post a bond – set at $2
million for the corporations and $500,000 each for the
individuals before they are allowed to continue to market
adult entertainment on the internet.
