The CFPB Verizon settlement closed to new claims on December 31, 2015, and the claim window cannot be reopened. If you filed a claim on time but never cashed the refund check you received in 2016, the money was almost certainly turned over to your state’s unclaimed property fund and can still be recovered there. If you never filed at all, the settlement itself is closed to you, though the underlying billing practice it addressed can still be disputed through other channels.
What the Settlement Covered
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Communications Commission ordered Verizon to pay $70 million in consumer refunds for allowing unauthorized third-party charges on customer wireless bills between 2004 and 2013.1Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. CFPB Takes Action to Obtain $120 Million in Redress from Sprint and Verizon for Illegal Mobile Cramming The practice, known as cramming, involved outside companies placing small monthly charges on customer bills for premium text message services like horoscopes, trivia alerts, and ringtone subscriptions. Verizon kept 30 to 40 percent of the revenue from those charges. Regulators found the carrier failed to get meaningful consent from customers and ignored complaints when customers noticed the fees.
Eligibility was straightforward: any current or former Verizon customer who had a premium third-party text message charge on their bill during the covered period qualified. Refunds covered 100 percent of the unauthorized charges, minus any partial refund Verizon had already issued.
Can You Still File a Claim
No. The December 31, 2015 deadline was final, and the settlement administrator processed claims after that date and distributed payments in 2016. There is no reopened window, extended period, or backup fund that accepts late claims from consumers who missed the original notification. If you were eligible but never submitted a claim form, the settlement itself is closed.
How to Find an Uncashed Refund Check
Refund checks that were mailed but never cashed do not disappear. After a dormancy period of roughly three to five years, unclaimed funds from settlements are turned over to state unclaimed property programs, a process called escheatment. Since the Verizon checks went out in 2016, any that were never deposited would have been transferred to a state by now and are waiting to be claimed.
Start with the free multi-state search tool at MissingMoney.com, sponsored by the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, which searches participating state databases at once.2National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators. Search for Your Unclaimed Property Search under the name and address you used when the settlement check was issued, not necessarily your current one.
Unclaimed property is reported to the state where the paying entity is located, which may not be the state where you lived. If you have moved since 2016, or if the check was issued from a different state than yours, run the search in multiple states. Every legitimate unclaimed property search through a government portal is free. Any site that charges a fee to look up or recover your funds is either a scam or a middleman doing what you can do yourself in a few minutes.
What Happened to Money Nobody Claimed
Redress funds that go undistributed do not return to Verizon, and they do not sit indefinitely waiting for late claimants. Under the CFPB’s Civil Penalty Fund rules, once eligible consumers have received full compensation or when further individual distribution is not feasible, the agency can direct remaining money toward consumer education and financial literacy programs.3Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Civil Penalty Fund Contacting the CFPB directly about a missed Verizon claim will not produce a payment.
Is the Refund Taxable
For most individual consumers, no. A refund of unauthorized charges is a return of money you already paid, not new income, and the IRS generally treats settlement payments as taxable only when they replace lost income or serve as punitive damages. A dollar-for-dollar reimbursement of an overcharge on a personal cell phone bill does not create a tax obligation.
The exception is if you deducted the original charges as a business expense in a prior year. In that case the tax benefit rule can make the recovered amount taxable. Beginning in 2026, the Form 1099-MISC reporting threshold rises to $2,000, up from $600.4Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Publication 1099 Individual cramming refunds were generally well below that amount, so most recipients would not receive a tax form.
If You Are Still Seeing Unauthorized Charges
The enforcement actions against Verizon and Sprint reshaped how wireless carriers handle third-party billing. Most major carriers no longer allow premium text message charges to hit customer bills at all. The FCC’s Truth-in-Billing rules require carriers to display any third-party charges in a distinct section of the bill with a separate subtotal, and to tell customers how to block third-party billing outright.5Federal Communications Commission. Truth-In-Billing Policy If your carrier offers a third-party charge block, turning it on prevents a repeat of what the settlement addressed.
For a suspicious charge on your current bill, dispute it directly with your carrier and ask for a full refund. If that does not resolve it, file a complaint with the FCC, which handles wireless billing disputes. The CFPB’s complaint portal is designed for financial products such as bank accounts and credit cards rather than phone bills. Your state attorney general’s consumer protection division is another option and was part of the original coalition that brought the Verizon case.