Career Step, LLC

Career Step paid more than $15.5 million and cancelled nearly $28 million in student debt to settle FTC allegations that it targeted servicemembers and their spouses with false claims about job placement, externships, and hiring partnerships, promoted using deceptive incentivized reviews.

Resolved. Refunded, settled, ceased operating, or the claim did not hold up. Kept for the record.

What is alleged

The FTC alleged that Career Step, LLC, an online career-training company, targeted servicemembers and their spouses using false claims about:

job placement and career outcomes
externships
hiring partnerships with prominent companies

The Commission further alleged the company used deceptive incentivized reviews to promote its services, and marketed through military-focused publications such as Military.com and at events sponsored by the military.

Why the targeting matters

Military spouses face repeated relocation, which makes portable qualifications unusually valuable and unusually easy to oversell. Marketing through military-focused publications and military-sponsored events borrows the credibility of those institutions.

An offer that reaches you through a channel you already trust has not been vetted by that channel. Placement in a publication is advertising, and sponsorship of an event is a payment.

Outcome

Career Step paid more than $15.5 million, which the FTC used to compensate students harmed by the advertising.

The settlement also required the company to cancel nearly $28 million in unpaid balances owed by current or former students who enrolled between February 2020 and February 2023. Other debts such as federal and private student loans or military benefits were not affected.

The stipulated order also prohibits Career Step from deceptively advertising any educational product or service in future.

The FTC sent payments to 42,794 people who enrolled and paid between 7 August 2018 and 11 September 2024 and who did not receive debt cancellation as part of the settlement.

The debt cancellation is the notable remedy

Most orders on this site move money to people who already paid. This one also erased what was still owed, which for a student mid-programme is often the larger figure and the one preventing them from moving on.

What is not established

A settlement resolves allegations without any admission or finding of wrongdoing.

We have not yet contacted Career Step for comment. When we do, the attempt and any response will appear on this entry.

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