In 2005, the site's owner, Experian Consumer Direct, was sued by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive marketing tactics.
[1][2] The penalty was largely seen as ineffective since it amounted to a small fraction of the $72 million annual advertising budget for FreeCreditReport.com.
[9] In October 2007,[10] Experian Consumer Direct began airing an advertising campaign featuring singer Eric Violette as a man struggling with difficult life circumstances due to his poor credit score, and his ignorance of it.
Violette was born June 12, 1981, in Montreal and attended the National Theatre School of Canada in 2002.
[16] MADtv parodied the ads in a sketch that featured a young man cursed by bad luck after getting a credit card in his senior year of high school.
[17] After racking up $80,000 in debt, he ends up in jail, escapes and eventually winds up living with a skinhead named Fang "in a soggy cardboard box".
In response to the commercials, the Federal Trade Commission produced two public service announcements to remind citizens of the right to annual free credit reports from annualcreditreport.com.
Many were typical entries, but some bands, apparently as a joke, submitted videos as well, most notably Comparative Anatomy.