The Direct Express lawsuit settlement amounts came out of a $1.2 million common fund in Almon, et al. v. Conduent State & Local Solutions, Inc., divided pro rata among cardholders who filed valid claims. Because the payout depended on how many people filed, no fixed per-person figure was set in advance, and individual checks were expected to be modest given the size of the eligible group.
Who Was Eligible for a Payment
The class covered Direct Express cardholders who submitted a fraud claim that was denied between February 12, 2018, and September 28, 2022. Eligibility turned on that denial: cardholders whose claims were paid, or who never filed a fraud claim in the first place, were not part of the class.
The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, Case No. 5:19-cv-01075-XR, before Judge Xavier Rodriguez. Kroll Settlement Administration LLC handled claim processing and distribution.
How the Payout Was Calculated
The $1.2 million was distributed on a pro rata basis, meaning each approved claimant received a share proportional to the total number of valid claims. Attorneys’ fees, administrative costs, and service awards of up to $2,000 for each named plaintiff were paid separately from the fund rather than deducted from it, so the full $1.2 million was available for class members.
Payments went out by check or electronic transfer. Available records do not specify a per-person payout figure. With a fund of $1.2 million and a class drawn from a program that has served roughly 3.4 to 4.5 million cardholders over the years, individual amounts were likely small even after accounting for the narrower subset who actually had denied fraud claims and filed for the settlement.
If your actual loss was larger than your pro rata share, the settlement did not make you whole for the difference. A class settlement resolves the claims for the agreed amount regardless of individual losses, and the court made no finding that the defendants had done anything wrong. Conduent and Comerica denied the allegations.
Deadlines and Current Status
The claim filing deadline was September 12, 2024. The deadline to opt out or object was August 13, 2024. The final approval hearing took place on September 5, 2024, and the court granted final approval on November 1, 2024.
If you did not file a claim by September 12, 2024, you cannot recover from this settlement now. The settlement website remained accessible as of mid-2026, but the case is closed. There is no reopened claim period, and no separate fund for late filers.
What the Settlement Was For
The plaintiffs alleged that Conduent and Comerica Bank violated the Electronic Funds Transfer Act and Regulation E by improperly handling fraud claims from Direct Express cardholders, including denying claims without adequate investigation. Direct Express is the prepaid debit card program run by the Treasury Department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service that delivers Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, and Veterans benefits to recipients who do not use a traditional bank account.
A Treasury Office of Inspector General audit covering January 2018 through September 2019 found that Conduent had failed to comply with Regulation E timeline requirements in at least one documented instance, including a failure to provide provisional credit when an investigation ran past ten business days. Auditors also found that call center agents did not consistently inform cardholders about deadlines for returning fraud questionnaires and gave misleading information about when investigations would begin. Those findings framed the conduct at issue in the class case, though the defendants denied wrongdoing and the court made no ruling on the merits.
Other Direct Express Legal Actions Are Not This Settlement
Several other cases involving Direct Express have circulated in the news, and they produced no payment to cardholders under the Almon settlement. Confusing them with the class action can lead people to expect money that is not coming.
The CFPB Case Against Comerica
In December 2024, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Comerica separately, alleging broader systemic failures. Those allegations included a vendor’s use of a “Heavy Queue” function that dropped nearly 25 million customer service calls between April 2019 and June 2023, more than 19,900 fraud investigations completed past the legally required ten-business-day window, over 220,000 vague approval-or-denial notices, and improper ATM fees charged to more than one million cardholders who were entitled to free withdrawals.
The CFPB requested a 90-day stay after the change in presidential administrations. Judge Jane J. Boyle denied the stay in March 2025, and the CFPB dismissed the case without prejudice on April 11, 2025. No consumer restitution was ordered or paid through that action. The dismissal was without prejudice, which technically preserves the right to refile, but as of the available record no refiling has occurred.
The Shareholder Suit
The Rosen Law Firm filed a securities class action alleging that Comerica executives made materially false and misleading statements about their oversight of Direct Express. The class period ran from February 2021 through May 2023, and the lead plaintiff deadline was in October 2023. That case is a shareholder action; the class consists of Comerica investors, not Direct Express cardholders. Benefit recipients are not members of that class based on their cardholder status.
Individual Cases
Individual complaints, such as the September 2021 case filed in the Eastern District of New York on behalf of Harriet Chapple over roughly $966 in unauthorized ATM withdrawals, resolved on their own terms and did not create a payout pool for other cardholders.
If You Believe You Should Have Been Paid
If you filed a timely claim in the Almon settlement and never received a payment, contact Kroll Settlement Administration LLC, the settlement administrator identified in the court’s approval order. If your fraud loss falls outside the February 12, 2018 through September 28, 2022 window, or you never filed a fraud claim that was denied, the Almon settlement does not apply to you, and the CFPB action that alleged broader misconduct was dismissed without producing consumer payments.