Enforcement Actions Could Follow as Next Step From FTC

Chris Capurso, counsel with Troutman Pepper Locke and co-host of Moving the Metal: The Auto Finance Podcast, was quoted in the April 24, 2026 Car Dealership Guy article, “Enforcement Actions Could Follow as Next Step From FTC.”

• Driving the news: The recent action and messaging from the FTC leads Chris Capurso, counsel at Troutman Pepper Locke, to believe enforcement actions in the automotive space could soon be on the way.
• “Especially in this administration, I don’t think they’re going to just take a regulatory action, like sending all those letters, and going through all this with the webinars and everything, if they were just trying to scare a little [dealers] a bit. I think there is probably going to be some enforcement on the way.” – Chris Capurso, Troutman Pepper Locke
• …
• Capruso noted the FTC’s point of view that the price is a ceiling that could be negotiated down.
• “You could always change the fees downward, but they don’t want people coming in and getting the shock of having something much higher,” Capruso said. “And that was really echoed in that Lindsay consent order that finally came out in the last month. It seems like this was all a concerted effort to have all this timed together – this order talking about price transparency, and then these letters and all these webinars.”
• …
• Capruso also said enforcement actions could come from consumer complaints made not only to the FTC but to the state attorneys general.
• “The AGs have been involved before, and you’ve had the cross federal and state investigations and consent orders,” Capruso said. “Without any insider knowledge or anything, it just seems like if this version of the FTC is endorsing this theory as an unfair, deceptive act or practice, you have to think that it emboldens state AGs. State AGs are very political, and if they get enough complaints about a certain type of practice, the AG’s are going to look into it.”