RentGrow inflated tenant records for years. Now it pays $2.25M.
Summary
The Justice Department, on referral from the FTC, sued tenant-screening company RentGrow for repeatedly listing the same criminal conviction or eviction proceeding as multiple separate records -- inflating applicants' apparent criminal and eviction histories -- and for mishandling consumer disputes about it. RentGrow had received complaints about the practice since at least 2018 but didn't change its procedures until after the FTC opened an investigation. It settled for a $2.25 million civil penalty.
One record, listed as fifteen
The complaint cites specific disputed reports to show the scale of the distortion. In one, RentGrow listed 15 separate criminal charges⧉ across seven records for an applicant -- enough for RentGrow to reject them. The applicant disputed it on different grounds than the formatting problems below: none of the 15 charges, they said, actually belonged to them. RentGrow agreed, removed all 15, and reversed its decision from denial to acceptance. In a separate case, a genuine duplicate-formatting failure: six numbered 'records' turned out to be four duplicates of the same two actual records, obscured by small fonts and formatting that split a single record across multiple pages.
View data as table
| Case 1: 3 eviction events reported, 2 actual proceedings (duplicate formatting) | 33.3% |
|---|---|
| Case 2: 6 records reported, 2 actual records (duplicate formatting) | 66.7% |
| Case 3: 15 charges reported, 0 remained after dispute (non-matching records) | 100% |
Known since 2018, fixed only under investigation
RentGrow had been receiving disputes⧉ about inaccurate and misleading reports since at least 2018, according to the complaint -- but didn't change its procedures until after the opened its investigation. Even the eventual fix was partial: in January 2024, RentGrow stopped auto-rejecting duplicate-record disputes as 'invalid,' but as of that March it confirmed it would still reject, without investigating or forwarding, disputes over records that changed after a report was already issued.
Told the tenant one thing, the landlord another
The complaint's fourth count alleges a distinct deception: when a consumer successfully disputed information but their overall accept/decline result didn't change, RentGrow told the consumer⧉ it had notified the landlord the report 'has been updated.' But the message RentGrow actually sent landlords in those cases, per the complaint, said only that there were 'no changes to the applicant's screening result' -- omitting that anything had been corrected at all, and leaving the consumer no way to know their landlord never heard about the fix.
The takeaway
- Real records, badly counted -- or not real at all. Two cited cases involved genuine duplicate-entry formatting (33% and 67% of listed records were repeats); a third involved 15 reported criminal charges that turned out not to belong to the applicant at all, reversing a denial.
- A known problem for over 6 years. RentGrow received disputes about this since 2018 and didn't act until the came knocking.
- The fix was legal minimums, and even those were incomplete. As of the complaint, RentGrow still treated one category of legitimate disputes as automatically invalid.
This article is based on the government's complaint, which contains allegations that have not been proven in court. Under the stipulated order⧉, 'Defendant neither admits nor denies any of the allegations in the Complaint... Only for purposes of this action, Defendant admits to the facts necessary to establish jurisdiction.' The $2.25 million penalty was a negotiated settlement figure, not a sum calculated from a disclosed count of individual violations -- the FCRA's $4,983-per-violation statutory cap is cited here for scale, not as the basis for the settlement math. The proposed order also bars RentGrow from misrepresenting dispute-outcome notifications to landlords, requires new procedures to prevent duplicate-record reporting going forward, and obligates RentGrow to submit a sworn compliance report one year after the order takes effect and retain compliance records for 5 years.
Sources(3) ▾
- U.S. Department of Justice (on behalf of the FTC), U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, United States v. RentGrow, Inc. -- Complaint for Permanent Injunction, Civil Penalty Judgment, and Other Relief (2026-07-09) — The formal federal complaint (Case No. 1:26-cv-02415) underlying the settlement, filed by on 's referral. Contains the specific factual allegations, cited example disputes, and legal counts. Fetched directly from ftc.gov and converted with pdftotext -layout; read in full. ftc.gov · original document
- Federal Trade Commission, RentGrow to Pay $2.25 Million to Settle FTC Allegations the Company Violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act and FTC Act (2026-07-09) — 's own announcement of the settlement, including the Bureau of Consumer Protection Director's quote and settlement terms (monetary penalty, injunctive terms). Fetched via curl with a browser user-agent after a direct WebFetch returned 403. ftc.gov · original document
- U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (proposed by DOJ/FTC and RentGrow), Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction, Civil Penalty Judgment, and Other Relief -- United States v. RentGrow, Inc. (2026-07-09) — The proposed consent order filed alongside the complaint, setting out injunctive terms, the civil penalty amount, and RentGrow's neither-admit-nor-deny stipulation. Fetched directly from ftc.gov and converted with pdftotext -layout; read in full. ftc.gov · original document
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The Department of Justice, acting on an referral, sued tenant-screening company RentGrow⧉ on July 9, 2026 for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act -- and settled the same day for a $2.25 million civil penalty. The core allegation: RentGrow's Tenant Screening Reports, sold to thousands of landlords and property managers nationwide, routinely displayed a single criminal conviction or eviction proceeding as multiple separate records, making applicants look like they had more criminal or eviction history than they actually did.