A payday loan enthusiast is now in charge of the FTC’s consumer protection division
Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted unanimously to approve the appointment of Chris Mufarrige as its new director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection.
The appointment puts a man in charge of protecting consumers who has a long history with business models aimed at bilking the poorest of them.
Mufarrige helped the first Trump administration water down protections against payday loans, years after running a car dealership that operated under a similar business model.
Of ensuring businesses had the ability to prey on consumers short on cash, one former colleague said, “It seems like a really personal issue for him.”
“Mufarrige’s appointment is the latest reminder that Trump is catering to corporations and special interests over working Americans’ wallets,” said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk in a press release. “Mufarrige has a well-known history of watering down consumer protection efforts, all the while bolstering corrupt, predatory business practices—much like his own.”
Mufarrige’s past shows a clear favoritism... for business models that rip off Americans short on cash.
Who is Chris Mufarrige?
In April 2020, the New York Times reported on Mufarrige’s apparent efforts to justify weakening a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) rule that cracked down on payday loans.
Days later, the American Prospect published an investigation into Mufarrige’s background running a “buy here, pay here” auto dealership—a business model some experts cited in the story consider predatory.
Mufarrige will now lead an office charged with conducting investigations into allegations of fraud and abuse, developing fair trade rules, and protecting consumers from deceptive and dangerous business practices.
His appointment comes amid what experts see as the Trump administration’s broader effort to tear down apolitical regulatory bodies throughout the federal government.
A leaked 2019 memo written by former CFPB economist Jonathan Lanning outlined concerns about Mufarrige’s meddling in the Bureau’s rulemaking process.
During the first Trump administration, the White House directed the CFPB to consider amending a potential rule that introduced tougher underwriting regulations on payday loans, the risky, high-interest loans marketed to lower-income consumers.
These loans allow people to quickly borrow against their paycheck, but often trap them in a cycle of debt.
The rule would have restricted the amounts and frequency of these loans that individual borrowers could secure—a limitation industry groups railed against.
Then an attorney at the Bureau, Mufarrige served as a liaison between researchers and the CFPB’s leadership, according to Lanning’s memo.
Both Lanning and anonymous comments in the memo identified Mufarrige as having consistently misinterpreted both internal and external research on payday lending due to incompetence, bias, or both.
The Daily Dot was unable to reach Mufarrige or Lanning, who is no longer with the CFPB, for comment.
The memo said Mufarrige outlined his concerns about the payday lending rule without sufficient evidence, ignored new research, and suggested late edits to the rule multiple times. Lanning pulled no punches in his assessment, concluding that Mufarrige’s comments “consistently show a tenuous, often flawed grasp of economics.”
“C.M. practices economics as a philosophy, rather than a social science,” added Lanning, referring to Mufarrige by his initials. “Which places him outside the orthodoxy, and introduces significant potential risk to the analyses to which he contributes.”
Colleagues confirmed to the New York Times that Mufarrige personally opposed the payday lending regulation, something a commenter on Lanning’s memo suspected.
“Do we have a sense of where the payday-specific issue he has come from?” one comment asked. “It seems like a really personal issue for him.”
The first Trump administration’s CFPB ultimately revoked the rule in 2020, nixing the requirement for lenders to ensure borrowers could pay them back.
The American Prospect soon unearthed a reason Mufarrige may have felt so strongly about payday loans: Less than a decade earlier, he ran a “buy here, pay here” car dealership, which provides high-interest auto loans to buyers with poor credit.
“Buy Here Pay Here,” the dealership’s sign advertised. “Your Job Is Your Credit,” it continued in both English and Spanish.
Documents confirmed by the Daily Dot from the Harris County Clerk in Houston show that a Christopher G. Mufarrige registered CNJ Auto Finance in 2008 and abandoned it in 2011. Google Maps street view photos from 2009 show a sprawling car lot surrounded by American and Mexican flags.
This type of dealership typically offers subprime loan terms for used cars. The worst actors have been accused of “saddling low-income consumers with loans they cannot afford, then repossessing the cars, and reselling them over and over again,” wrote the New Jersey attorney general’s office when it filed a lawsuit against two dealerships in the state.
Little information is available about CNJ’s particular business model under Mufarrige, but news reports and court filings indicate the car lot predated and outlasted his tenure.
A different company at the same address, registered by a relative of Mufarrige, received a cease-and-desist from the Texas Office of Consumer Credit Commissioner for issuing loans without a license for years.
According to his LinkedIn, Mufarrige enrolled in law school at George Mason in 2011, just after his time with CNJ. He’s since risen through the ranks in various regulatory agencies and in private practice.
At one stop, he worked for a firm that defended Google in an antitrust suit. Mufarrige’s alliance with big tech firms raised concerns when he became chief of staff for FTC Commissioner Melissa Holyoak last year.
“We cannot allow the FTC to devolve into yet another agency hijacked by Big Tech corporate interests as a bulwark against regulation,” read a 2024 letter from members of the conservative anti-big-tech Bull Moose Project and New York Young Republican Club leader Gavin Wax.
Now Mufarrige oversees an office that can protect consumers from, among other things, “buy here, pay here” car dealerships and big tech overreach.
The auto marketplace is a key focus of the FTC, particularly since the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 expanded the Commission’s power. In 2023 the FTC’s “Combating Auto Retail Scams” rule stiffened requirements against deceptive pricing and product misrepresentations at car dealerships.
The rule was successfully challenged in court this year by car dealership industry groups.
Andrea Beaty, Research Director at the Revolving Door Project, said Mufarrige’s rise is emblematic of the Trump administration’s closeness with corporate interests.
His hire “reinforces the notion that victims of ghoulish corporate behavior will be an afterthought these coming four years,” Beaty said.
The FTC did not respond to requests for comment about Mufarrige.
The press release announcing his role from new FTC chair and self-proclaimed Trump loyalist Andrew Ferguson touted his work for protecting consumers from fraud.
“Chris is a stellar attorney and a tireless public servant,” Ferguson said. “The Bureau of Consumer Protection with Chris at the helm will work every day to protect the American consumer from fraud, and to safeguard children when they are online.”
Ferguson did not mention all the work Mufarrige has done which seems to contradict that statement.
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