Got a CFPB Refund Check? Here Is Exactly What to Do

A check arrived from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, referencing Lexington Law or CreditRepair.com. You are not being scammed. The CFPB is distributing approximately $1.8 billion in refund checks to around 4.3 million former customers of Progrexion — the parent company that operated both services until it filed for bankruptcy in 2023. The check is real and you should cash it.

That said, understanding what this refund represents — and what it leaves completely untouched — is the more important conversation. The check puts money back in your pocket. It does nothing to fix your credit report. If you enrolled with Lexington Law or CreditRepair.com because you had negative items on your credit, those items are still there. This article covers both: what to do with the check, and what to do next about your credit.

What Is This CFPB Refund Check?

To understand the check, you need to understand what Lexington Law was doing and why the federal government intervened.

Progrexion Marketing, Inc. and its subsidiaries — Lexington Law Firm and CreditRepair.com — were among the largest credit repair organizations in the United States. At their peak, they served millions of customers each year and collected monthly fees in exchange for sending dispute letters to credit bureaus on customers' behalf.

In March 2023, the CFPB filed a lawsuit against Progrexion in federal court. The bureau alleged that the company systematically violated the Credit Repair Organizations Act (CROA), a federal law that specifically prohibits credit repair companies from collecting any fee before the services promised to the consumer have been fully performed. The CFPB's complaint detailed how Progrexion was charging customers immediately upon enrollment — before any services were delivered — in direct violation of the law.

The court agreed with the CFPB's position and entered a judgment of $2.7 billion against Progrexion and its subsidiaries. Facing this liability, Progrexion filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June 2023. The company's operations — Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com — ceased. Approximately 4.3 million customers suddenly had no service provider and no active disputes being worked on their behalf.

As part of the resolution of the enforcement action, the CFPB administered a redress distribution to affected consumers. Because the total refund pool of $1.8 billion is less than the full $2.7 billion judgment, individual check amounts may reflect a proportional share rather than a dollar-for-dollar recovery of every fee you paid. The CFPB has distributed refunds like this before in major enforcement actions — in 2022, the bureau sent checks to over 200,000 consumers affected by a debt collection enforcement action using the same mechanism.

The credit repair industry itself remains large and growing. The U.S. credit repair market reached approximately $3.98 billion in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of 13.7%, and projections suggest it will grow to nearly $13 billion by 2032. The collapse of Lexington Law removed one player but did not diminish the underlying need — tens of millions of Americans still carry inaccurate or negative items on their credit reports.

Is the Refund Check Real or a Scam?

This is a fair question. Anytime a large check arrives unexpectedly in the mail, skepticism is a healthy response. But this one is legitimate.

The CFPB has administered dozens of consumer redress programs and regularly mails checks directly to affected consumers. Unlike most scams, you were not contacted by phone or email asking for personal information or a processing fee before the check arrived. The check came through the mail — directly from a government agency — to a consumer who actually did business with Lexington Law or CreditRepair.com.

How to verify the check is genuine:

• Call the CFPB directly at 1-855-411-2372 (Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET) and ask about the Progrexion redress program.
• Visit consumerfinance.gov and search for "Progrexion" or "Lexington Law" to find the official enforcement page.
• Do not call any phone number printed on the check itself if you are uncertain — verify the CFPB contact information from the official website independently.

How to Cash Your CFPB Refund Check

Once you have confirmed the check is from the official CFPB redress distribution, cashing it is straightforward. Treat it like any other check you receive:

1. Endorse the back of the check by signing your name in the endorsement area.
2. Deposit it at your bank or credit union in person at a teller, through an ATM, or via your bank's mobile check deposit feature.
3. Keep a photocopy of both sides before depositing, along with the accompanying letter if one was included.
4. Do not sign the check over to a third party. Accepting it yourself does not limit any other legal options you may have.

What if the check has expired? Most paper checks issued in government redress programs are valid for 90 to 180 days. If your check has passed that window, do not attempt to deposit it. Instead, contact the CFPB's consumer response team at 1-855-411-2372 and ask about a replacement. Keep the expired check as documentation when you call.

What if you never received a check but believe you qualify? If you were a paying customer of Lexington Law or CreditRepair.com at any point before the company shut down in 2023, you may be in the eligible pool. Contact the CFPB directly to inquire about whether your account was included and whether a check was mailed to an outdated address.

Is the CFPB Refund Check Taxable?

This question comes up frequently, and the general answer is that refunds of previously paid consumer fees are not treated as taxable income. The money you received represents a return of fees you already paid from after-tax dollars. You are not receiving a windfall — you are getting back money that was already yours.

In previous CFPB redress distributions, the IRS has not classified consumer refund payments as taxable income in guidance published for affected taxpayers.

That said, individual situations vary. If you previously deducted the fees you paid to Lexington Law on a tax return — which would be unusual for most consumers, as personal credit repair expenses are generally not deductible — you may have a different tax position. The amount of the check may also be relevant if it is large enough to affect other calculations.

The Check Does Not Fix Your Credit

This is the part most people need to hear most clearly: receiving a CFPB refund check has no effect on your credit report.

The check compensates you financially for fees you paid illegally. It does not communicate with Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion. It does not dispute, remove, update, or in any way alter any item on your credit file. The credit bureaus have no knowledge that you received the check. Your creditors have no knowledge. Nothing changed.

If you enrolled with Lexington Law because you had a collection account from a medical bill, a charge-off from a closed credit card, a string of late payments from a difficult year, or any other negative item — all of those items are still sitting on your report exactly where they were when Lexington Law shut down.

In fact, the shutdown may have left your credit in a more complicated state than when you started:

• Disputes that were in progress stopped mid-process. When Lexington Law shut down, any dispute letters that had been sent to bureaus were in the middle of the 30-day investigation window. Follow-up steps — the second and third rounds of letters that move the process forward — never happened.
• Method of Verification requests went unsent. Under FCRA Section 611, when a bureau verifies an item rather than removing it, you have the legal right to demand they tell you the method of verification they used. This request is often the lever that produces a second investigation. Lexington Law's clients never got this step.
• Items may have been re-inserted. Creditors can re-insert previously deleted items if they certify accuracy — but they are required to notify you first. Without anyone monitoring your reports after the shutdown, a re-insertion may have happened without your knowledge.
• Time has continued passing. The credit repair process depends on maintaining pressure over time. The months since the shutdown have been months without anyone working on your behalf, and any momentum from early dispute rounds has dissipated.

Your Action Plan for Actually Repairing Your Credit

The good news is that the dispute process works. Inaccurate, unverifiable, and outdated items can be successfully removed from credit reports — the FCRA gives you that right directly, without any intermediary. Here is the step-by-step path to pick up where the process left off.

Step 1: Get Your Free Credit Reports Today

Go to AnnualCreditReport.com — the federally mandated free access portal established under the FCRA. Pull your full report from all three bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion separately. Do not rely on Credit Karma or any score monitoring app for this task. Those platforms show you a summary and a VantageScore, not the complete tradeline data you need to analyze for disputable items. The full bureau reports are what matter.

Step 2: Build Your Dispute Inventory

Go through each report methodically. For every negative item, record: the creditor name, account number, type of account, date opened, date of first delinquency (the key date for the 7-year reporting clock), balance reported, and current status. Then flag each item in one of three categories:

• Factually inaccurate — wrong balance, wrong payment status, wrong account holder, account that is not yours, duplicate reporting
• Unverifiable — older collections sold multiple times where the current holder may not have documentation to verify the debt
• Past the reporting window — most negative items must be removed after 7 years from the date of first delinquency; bankruptcies remain for 10 years

Items that are accurate, recent, and verifiable cannot be legally removed by any dispute process. Anyone who tells you otherwise is misleading you. Focus your energy on the first two categories.

Step 3: Send Dispute Letters by Certified Mail

For each disputeable item, write a dispute letter to each bureau that is reporting it. The letter should identify the item specifically, state clearly why it is inaccurate or unverifiable, and request an investigation and correction or removal. Include a copy of your government-issued ID and a copy of your credit report with the relevant item highlighted. Send every letter via certified mail with return receipt requested — this creates the paper trail that matters if you ever need to escalate to a regulatory complaint or legal action.

The bureau's 30-day investigation clock starts when they receive the letter. They must send you the results of the investigation. If they verify the item and keep it, you can send a Method of Verification request demanding they tell you how they verified it. If they delete it, monitor your report for 90 days to confirm no re-insertion.

Step 4: Compare Credit Repair Services and Choose With Eyes Open

You can do this process yourself entirely for free. The only costs are postage and your time. But if you want software to help generate letters, track responses, and manage the process across three bureaus simultaneously, here is how the current market looks:

Service	Monthly Fee	Upfront Fee	CROA Compliant	Note
Sky Blue Credit	$79/mo	$79	Yes	Human review of disputes
Credit Saint	$79–$119/mo	$99–$195	Yes	Tiered plans, aggressive dispute approach
The Credit Pros	$119/mo	$119	Yes	Credit monitoring included
Restore Credit	$149/mo	$0	Yes	No upfront fees. Cancel anytime. You control every letter.

The single most important factor in choosing any credit repair service after the Lexington Law collapse is whether the company charges fees before services are delivered. CROA makes upfront fees illegal for credit repair organizations — and the CFPB's $2.7 billion judgment against Progrexion is the most emphatic possible demonstration of why that rule exists. Restore Credit charges from $29 per month (free to start) with no upfront fees. You can cancel at any time. You are never charged before service is performed.

Step 5: Monitor and Follow Through

Credit repair is not a one-and-done event. The bureaus have 30 days to investigate. After results arrive, you need to review them, determine whether escalation is warranted, and send follow-up correspondence as needed. For complex cases with multiple items across multiple bureaus, the full process can take 6 to 12 months. Staying organized and consistent is what produces results — which is exactly what was missing when Lexington Law abruptly ceased operations.

Set a recurring reminder to pull your credit reports quarterly. Free weekly access to all three reports is available at AnnualCreditReport.com as of recent CFPB guidance. Use it. A dispute you sent and forgot about can be won or lost in the 30 days after the bureau responds, so staying on top of the timeline matters.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the CFPB check real or a scam?

It is real. The CFPB obtained a $2.7 billion judgment against Progrexion, the parent company of Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com, for illegal upfront fee practices under CROA. The bureau is distributing $1.8 billion to approximately 4.3 million affected customers. Verify by calling the CFPB at 1-855-411-2372 or visiting consumerfinance.gov.

How do I cash it?

Endorse and deposit it at your bank — in person, at an ATM, or via mobile deposit — exactly as you would any personal check. If the check has expired, call the CFPB to request a replacement before attempting to deposit it.

Is it taxable income?

For most people, no. It is a return of fees you previously paid, not new income. Consult a tax advisor if the amount is significant or if you have any uncertainty.

What should I do about my credit now?

Get your free reports at AnnualCreditReport.com, build a dispute inventory of inaccurate and unverifiable items, and restart the dispute process. You can do this yourself for free, or use a CROA-compliant service like Restore Credit that charges no fees before services are delivered.