Feds Eye Americans ‘Credit Washing’ Using Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Complaints
The agency receives millions of complaints every year — with numbers growing.
Federal regulators and the credit-reporting industry are examining whether Americans are exploiting the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s complaint system to try to erase accurate negative information from their credit reports, a practice critics call “credit washing.”
A credit report can determine whether someone qualifies to buy a home, rent an apartment, finance or lease a vehicle, or even secure a job. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion compile reports lenders, landlords, and employers widely use when making those decisions.
Since the CFPB launched its consumer-complaint portal in July 2011 during President Barack Obama’s administration, Americans have been able to challenge information they believe is inaccurate. Credit bureaus must respond to those complaints and, per CFPB data, did so 99.9 percent of the time in 2025.
The size of the credit-reporting system underscores the stakes. The agency said in 2022 more than 200 million U.S. adults had credit reports covering roughly 1.6 billion accounts. By March 2025, the bureau reported receiving 6.6 million consumer complaints, with 5.8 million, or 88 percent, involving credit or consumer reporting.
Complaint volumes have climbed sharply over the past several years. The bureau received about 352,000 consumer complaints in 2019. That rose to 1.6 million in 2023 and 3.3 million in 2024.
With so many consumers and accounts in the system, mistakes are inevitable. But the CFPB and the credit-reporting industry’s trade association are increasingly concerned some complaints are being filed not to correct errors but to remove accurate information. They say some consumers are filing those complaints themselves, while others are acting through credit-repair businesses.
The monthly average number of complaints alleging incorrect information on credit reports rose 249 percent in 2025 compared with the previous two years.
Dan Smith, president and CEO of the Consumer Data Industry Association, said social-media influencers and credit-repair firms sometimes portray the complaint portal as a “shortcut” for deleting legitimate negative information from a credit report.
“Some are encouraged to submit multiple complaints about the same issue. Others are coached to characterize accurate information as identity theft or fraud in an effort to erase it,” Mr. Smith wrote. “CDIA members are seeing more complaints that appear tied to these kinds of campaigns, including repeated submissions, and claims that do not reflect legitimate disputes.”
Mr. Smith said abuse of the complaint process “can affect the reliability of the underlying credit information itself.” He urged stronger screening procedures to weed out “repeated, abusive, and automated” complaints, along with more robust identity verification.
Congress has also taken notice.
House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions Chairman Andy Barr, Kentucky Republican, in February introduced the Eliminating Fraud in the CFPB’s Complaint Database Act, which would tighten the bureau’s complaint process.
The legislation would require consumers, or those filing on their behalf, to verify their identities and certify under penalty of perjury that their complaints are true and accurate. Consumers would also have to notify a credit bureau or financial institution at least 60 days before filing a complaint. And the bill would allow companies to close complaints without taking action if they determine a dispute is frivolous, duplicative, misleading, or already resolved.
Mr. Smith’s Consumer Data Industry Association and the American Financial Services Association support the proposal. The Consumer Federation of America and Consumer Action both oppose it, calling the measure “a lopsided, wrong-headed, and harmful bill. The changes envisioned in it will obstruct people from quickly rectifying financial complaints.”
The bill has no cosponsors and remains before the House Financial Services Committee. It was discussed during an April hearing of Mr. Barr’s subcommittee but has not advanced further.
Credit expert John Ulzheimer doesn’t believe the legislation offers a meaningful solution to the complaint-portal-integrity issue.
“Nefarious actors in the credit repair space don’t seem to care about complying with things like the Credit Repair Organizations Act or the Telemarketing Sales Rule, so I have no reason to believe they’ll comply with any new statute,” he told The Washington Star. The issue, he said, is “more serious for lenders” because with continued abuse of the system, “they’d be making decisions based on watered down credit report data.”
Mr. Barr, the CFPB, the Consumer Data Industry Association, and credit bureaus Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion did not respond to the Star’s requests for comment.
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