I stopped taking on new copywriting assignments not quite 2 years ago, but have continued to work with a small group of clients where the experience was personally satisfying and I felt I could make a measurable difference. In particular, I continued to work with Online Trading Academy, a financial education company with a broad curriculum designed to improve skills and confidence among investors who are making their own decisions.
Last Friday, February 28, this came to an end. The Federal Trade Commission brought an injunction against OTA alleging that the defendants (3 principal owners of OTA) “have made false or unsubstantiated representations that consumers who purchase Defendants’ programs will likely earn substantial income, any consumer can learn and use Defendants’ strategy to earn income without significant investable capital or free time, and Defendants’ instructors have amassed substantial wealth by trading in the financial markets.”
This didn’t sound like the company I had worked with for 10 years where my copy was constantly edited to avoid “promissory” claims. Nonetheless, the FTC wasn’t so much alleging as demanding. They sought a restraining order to keep OTA from distributing any monies that might be used as a settlement for the consumers who purchased education from OTA, and they got it from a U.S. District Court. All assets were frozen, meaning the company could not pay its contractors (like me) or meet its payroll. Last Friday, hundreds of employees were given their notice of termination.
Most of these were dedicated, hardworking people who handled the nuts and bolts of technology, customer service and such. They were a very diverse group, as you can see from this page of staff photos. (The website is still fully operational in case you want to click around and form your own opinions about whether this is some kind of bait-and-switch operation; OTA is not allowed to take it down or alter it per the terms of the restraining order.) There were meditators, musicians, adoptive parents, churchgoers. They were a family. And they’re now out of work with no advance notice and no paycheck.
A client contact who is on the creative side, not upper management, hypothesized that because the FTC like other agencies has been stripped to its bare bones in recent years, they do not have the bandwidth to investigate claims or negotiate with companies. They simply go for the jugular, with a preemptive strike. If it causes great personal and financial pain to people who may be exonerated when the case ultimately is heard in court, so be it.
This morning I sat in on an online education session moderated by one of the three principals, who had spent the weekend preparing a detailed financial statement down to the VIN numbers on his vehicles as a condition of the restraining order. If he was stressed, you wouldn’t know it nor would you have guessed this session was anything other than business as usual. Since all assets are frozen he was in effect donating his time as were the other subject matter experts and the technology enablers on the webcast. Nearly 1000 people were in attendance.
We discussed last week’s market turbulence in the uncertainty around the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The moderator drew a number of stock charts and indicated possible turning points as well as opportunities that had existed during the upheaval on Friday. Several students contributed on the chat about trades that they had taken or planned to take. At no point were promises about money made or was money per se even discussed. This was a technical discussion about predicting market direction. OTA offers the tools and the training, but it is up to the students to apply this knowledge and they may or may not find profits. If the FTC had sat in on this or any of the dozens of sessions each week they would have realized how off-base the claims of their investigators were.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose a number of friends and family members simultaneously in a plane crash or other unpredictable disaster. But I can guess what that sense of overwhelming loss must feel like. The OTA folks are very much alive but their lives have been thrown into chaos by the kind of top-down bureaucratic intervention we might expect in an autocratic country like China, but certainly not the United States.
I’m outraged and angry and wish I could come up with a good call of action in closing. But I feel completely helpless, which only makes me angrier.
Even if the case is ultimately found in OTA’s favor, the damage to peoples’ lives is already irreparable. The case number is SACV 20-287 JVS (KESx) and you can google it if you like, or simply try “OTA vs FTC”. Compare what you see in the court documents with what the student say in their testimonials—this page might be a good starting point—then contemplate the possibility that if this could happen to Online Trading Academy, it could happen to any company that promises to help people point their lives in a new direction.