Three ex-CFPB enforcement chiefs launched a law firm targeting predatory lending, junk fees and algorithmic wage-setting after securing $9.5 billion in consumer relief.
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Three former senior enforcement leaders from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have started a public interest law firm focused on consumer, tenant, workers' and civil rights.
Eric Halperin, Cara Petersen and Tara Mikkilineni led a CFPB team that secured orders for $9.5 billion in penalties and payments to consumers between 2021 and 2025, according to a Tuesday press release. As founding partners of Halperin Petersen & Mikkilineni LLP (HPM), they will target predatory lending, illegal junk fees, deceptive schemes, unlawful evictions, discriminatory housing practices, wage theft, illegal misclassification, invasive monitoring programs, algorithmic wage-setting and discriminatory lending.
Halperin said litigation is critical to pushing back against corporate abuse. Petersen said the firm is proud to take up the fight to defend working people. Mikkilineni said consumer rights, civil rights and workers' rights are all under attack, and HPM will use every tool available to stop the onslaught.
Petersen resigned as acting enforcement director in June 2025, saying the CFPB leadership under President Donald Trump had no intention to enforce the law in any meaningful way. Her resignation came months after the CFPB's enforcement and supervision chiefs stepped down amid the administration's push to dismantle the agency. Halperin and Mikkilineni also left the CFPB shortly after Trump began his second term, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
Mikkilineni said algorithmic wage-setting is an example of the technology-powered financial abuses the firm will focus on. She described old school predatory financial models morphing into a particular set of technologies, with AI making them more powerful, more seamless and less transparent to the consumer. She said it seems unlikely the federal government will do a lot of intervention in that area.
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