The FTC sued GovAssist, saying passport help advertised from $89 really cost at least $148

The Federal Trade Commission has sued two passport-service companies and their owner, alleging that websites advertising passport help from $89 charged at least $148 for the cheapest service. The defendants are GovAssist LLC, Entry LLC and Scott Zuckerman, who the agency says is the owner and sole member of both companies. The complaint was filed on Oct. 22 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, and everything in it is an allegation rather than a court finding.

Tech news in one quick read: Get the most interesting stories in startups, tech and programming, each with a short TLDR, in one daily email from TLDR.

Subscribe to TLDR →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.

Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said that using paid Google search ads and landing pages to impersonate the government and target American travelers is illegal, and that the agency will pursue bad actors in search advertising schemes that mislead consumers. The FTC says the sites ran since at least October 2023 and led customers to believe they were dealing with the State Department or an authorized provider. What follows tracks the agency’s own numbers and keeps each claim attributed to the FTC.

From $89 to $148: how the pricing allegedly worked

According to the FTC’s announcement, the websites advertised services that start at $89. The agency says the lowest price a customer could actually pay was $119 plus a $29 shipping fee, for a total of $148. The complaint, filed as case number 3:26-cv-1675, ties the $89 claim to Entry.com, which allegedly said its services started at that figure, and it says pricing on that site’s application page ran from $119 up to $499. The top end is described as a charge for what the site called urgent expediting, so the distance between the advertised price and the bill could be far wider than the $59 gap at the bottom.

The complaint adds that consumers paid an average of $145 each, and that the State Department’s own fee is a separate charge, which it cites at $165. The FTC says that government fee was downplayed or left out of the sites’ pricing, so some customers did not expect to pay a second time. By the complaint’s account, a traveler who paid the defendants and then the government ended up paying at least twice what applying directly would have cost.

Paid search ads and the State Department look-alike

The impersonation claim rests on how the sites were found. The FTC alleges the defendants bought paid Google search ads so that GovAssist.com, Entry.com and a third site would appear as top sponsored results for passport-related searches, and that the pages then presented themselves as though the government or an authorized provider stood behind them. The agency says neither was true.

The FTC also challenges what the sites promised to deliver. It says the defendants claimed they could directly issue U.S. passports, when consumers often received only a completed application form that the State Department hands out free. It further alleges the sites promised expedited service in six to 10 or three to four business days, which the agency says is faster than the State Department’s own fastest expedited option.

Fake reviews and an earlier FTC order

A third strand of the case concerns trust signals. The FTC says the sites displayed an excellent rating from Trustpilot and other review sites that was built on large numbers of fake positive reviews. The complaint says Entry.com showed an “Excellent” rating based on more than 11,000 reviews on May 6, 2026, that Trustpilot identified hundreds of reviews as fabricated and removed them, and that Trustpilot warned the defendants in May 2025 about abnormally high numbers of fake reviews, a concern the complaint says they did not dispute.

The FTC also says Zuckerman ran the scheme while already bound by an earlier FTC order from a prior case against Support King LLC, a matter involving stalkerware that ended in a final administrative order on data privacy.

Five counts and the relief the FTC wants

The complaint pleads five counts. Three are under the FTC Act: deceptive impersonation claims, deceptive passport claims and deceptive consumer reviews. The fourth is impersonation of the government under the agency’s Impersonation Rule, and the fifth is use of false statements to obtain customer information under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The FTC asks for a permanent injunction and monetary relief, including refunds and the rescission or reformation of contracts, plus any other relief the court finds necessary to redress consumer injury.

On the scale of that injury, the complaint alleges at least $40 million was collected from more than 300,000 consumers over the three years before filing. The Commission voted 2-0 to authorize staff to file, and the agency credits the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico and the State Department for assistance. The filing is listed on the FTC’s case page for GovAssist, where later documents will appear as the case moves forward.

The FTC points consumers who think they dealt with a look-alike site to its ReportFraud portal, where complaints about impersonation and other deceptive sales are collected. The defendants’ side of the dispute has not been laid out in the agency’s materials, so the $89-versus-$148 comparison remains the FTC’s contention until a court rules on it.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

Tech news in one quick read: Subscribe to TLDR →

We may earn a commission if you sign up.