His name was the first red flag.
Credit.com introduced its new CEO as Rams Meijer on June 11, according to several current and recently departed employees. The name matches his LinkedIn profile, where he still claims the CEO title, as of Monday. But Rams, staff members soon learned, is short for Ramses. And Ramses Meijer had been accused of serious misconduct by past colleagues.
Employees quickly discovered a court document from a civil lawsuit in Illinois, in which Meijer was accused of sexual misconduct in a 20-count complaint. The case was settled privately and dismissed, according to a docket report, and documents filed before the settlement are not publicly available online.
A May 2023 appellate court ruling on a later appeal by the plaintiffs, however, was posted online and detailed some of the suit’s accusations: that Meijer used his position as a client of his alleged victims’ company to subject women to “increasingly sexual comments and physical conduct”; and that he allegedly sexually assaulted two women at an event sponsored by his former employer.
Word traveled quickly. Employees said they feared for their safety, sources said. Several threatened to quit.
Thirteen days after he was introduced as CEO, Meijer was gone — according to several former and current employees, whom The Salt Lake Tribune has agreed not to name because they fear retaliation. The Tribune spoke to sources independently of each other and verified their connections to Credit.com.
This latest turmoil, they said, came after employee trust had already eroded at what was once one of the biggest credit repair enterprises in the country — until federal regulators demanded $2.7 billion in a settlement over improper charges to its customers.
The business, technically a conglomerate of companies that included Progrexion, Credit.com, CreditRepair.com and Lexington Law, shut down most of its operations, laid off hundreds of workers and filed for bankruptcy.
But first, according to court documents, executives got bonuses amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Credit.com’s attorney declined answer specific questions and said the company could not comment on employee matters. Company lenders did not respond to requests for comment; Meijer did not respond to messages sent to him online and to his attorneys.
Credit.com is a shell of what it was before the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau sued it in 2019, said employee Taisia Auston. This was the last straw, she said, that caused her faith in the company to collapse. She followed through on her resignation and left the company last week.
“This was the cherry on top,” Auston said. “I felt like, the universe is saying something, saying, ‘you should go.’”
Bonuses, then bankruptcy
Credit repair companies offer to help people lower or eliminate credit card debt by negotiating with creditors, often with the help of on-staff legal counsel. They’re allowed to sell their services over the phone.
But they cannot charge customers until the service has been performed. So things like start-up fees or advanced billing are illegal, according to a provision of the Federal Trade Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule that specifically concerns credit repair services.
The CFPB accused Credit.com’s parent company, PGX Holdings, and its subsidiaries of violating that provision and prematurely collecting fees and payments from customers.
In March 2023, a Utah federal judge barred the conglomerate from telemarketing for 10 years, and subsequently ordered a nearly $2.7 billion settlement, plus a $45.8 million penalty against Progrexion and an $18 million penalty against Lexington Law.
The “credit repair giants” schemed to “pad their pockets with billions in fees,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra in a statement. “This scam is another sign that we must do more to fix the credit reporting and scoring system in our country.”
The companies shut down their call centers and laid off nearly 1,000 people, according to federal court documents.
Two Utah employees separately sued Progexion for failing to issue a WARN notice, which requires employers to provide at least 60 days written notice of impending mass layoffs. But the companies filed for bankruptcy, which stayed the WARN Act lawsuits and stalled the settlement.
Company executives received bonuses in the months leading up to and immediately after the layoffs and bankruptcy filing, court documents show. Former CEO Chad Wallace got a $577,000 bonus in June 2023, according to a bankruptcy document filed a month later.
Months later, Credit.com Holdings, LLC, organized to protect the interests of the lenders, bought the assets of Progrexion and related companies out of bankruptcy, according to Delaware court documents.
Blue Torch Finance also signed on to manage the company’s assets, according to court filings.
Many of Credit.com’s remaining employees were formerly Progrexion or Lexington Law employees — and what was once a conglomerate of several thousand employees has withered to a company of fewer than 200, one employee estimated. Some were laid off as recently as last month.
(LinkedIn) A screenshot of Rams (Ramses) Meijer's LinkedIn profile captured July 2, where he is still listed as CEO of Credit.com.
A new, new CEO
Meijer was hired to replace Wallace, who led Progexion and its affiliates through the CFPB lawsuit and bankruptcy proceedings. When some employees started looking into their new boss, all it took was a Google search to find the legal document, and it quickly circulated through the office, the employee sources said.
The appeals filing included a narrative of the plaintiffs’ allegations: online travel company Orbitz Worldwide (owned by Expedia Group) had hired the company where they worked — Havas — to create an advertising and marketing campaign. Meijer worked for Orbitz and managed the project on its end, working directly with the plaintiffs.
Plaintiffs were quickly subjected to “frequent sexual comments and unwanted physical contact,” they claimed, which escalated to the alleged sexual assaults at an Expedia-sponsored event.
The plaintiffs had privately settled with Havas, according to the document. But a trial judge ruled that the Havas deal meant Orbitz should pay less in its separate settlement with them.
The Illinois Contribution Act says that if two or more parties are liable for the same damages, neither should pay “more than his pro rata share of the common liability.” The judge decided Orbitz was entitled to a “setoff of 30% of the total settlement.”
The plaintiffs disagreed and asked the appeals court to reverse that decision. They claimed that each employer had protected Meijer and enabled his alleged predatory behavior — but, they argued in the appeal, the impacts of each company’s complicity were distinct and should be treated differently.
The appeals court affirmed the initial ruling, in favor of the companies. The settlement details are confidential.
As the document was shared among Credit.com employees, some made formal complaints to the HR department, the employee sources said. Others stopped going to the office and said they would not meet with Meijer privately, or at all. Several threatened to quit if Meijer kept his post, the sources said.
Thirteen days after introducing the new CEO, Lee Hastel, partner at Blue Torch and a Credit.com board member, told the staff that Meijer was leaving the company, several of the employee sources said, and he claimed the board had not known of Meijer’s past. Some of the employee sources said they believed Hastel and took his statement as a sign he had taken them seriously and owned up to a mistake.
The board announced an interim CEO, Scott Mackley, the same day it announced Meijer’s departure.
And some of the employees said they feel there are still things worth fighting for at Credit.com. Employee Kensey Slone said she is proud of the culture she and her colleagues have helped foster: Supportive, uplifting and surprisingly diverse.
“We really care about one another,” Slone said.
Shannon Sollitt is a Report for America corps member covering business accountability and sustainability for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.