Illinois Attorney General Announces Multistate Settlement with Cameo Over Consumer Protection Violations

Attorney General Kwame Raoul has made public a multistate settlement involving Baron App Inc., known for its popular personalized video service Cameo. The settlement, announced Wednesday, comes as a response to the company's failure to provide adequate disclosures in line with consumer protection laws. The allegations suggested that Cameo didn't duly inform consumers about paid endorsements in video business messages, according to a news release by the Attorney General's office.

The agreement, stemming from a joint investigation by a bipartisan coalition of 30 attorneys general, mandates Cameo to establish essential measures to comply with all state and federal laws, including the FTC’s Endorsement Guides. As a result of the investigation, which revealed Cameo's compliance shortcomings, the company is to introduce a watermark system for paid advertisements, alongside implementing systems for legal disclosures to and from celebrities and consumers, as well as monitoring and reporting mechanisms for non-compliant videos. In the settlement, Cameo has pledged transparency moving forward with enhancements designed to avoid such omissions again.

"Today's settlement ensures Cameo is held accountable after the company failed to follow state and federal laws intended to protect consumers," said Raoul. "I will continue to work with fellow attorneys general to protect Illinoisans and consumers across the nation from fraud and deceptive business practices." The investigation's findings pointed to potential violations of consumer protection statutes and requirements for paid advertiser disclosure as stipulated by the Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides.

The probe into Cameo's operations also revealed that for the less-expensive personal message Cameo feature, some users who had intended to sign up mistakenly received no refund. Joining Attorney General Kwame Raoul in the announcement of the settlement are counterparts from a wide-ranging list of states across multiple regions, reflective of the national scale of the concern and the collaborative effort to resolve it. Among them are attorneys general representing states from Ohio to Hawaii, underscoring the effort’s widespread nature and the shared interest in maintaining robust consumer protection standards.