By Attorney General Raúl Labrador
Dear Friends,
In the first six months of 2026, my Consumer Protection Division returned $956,000 to Idaho consumers, without a single lawsuit or court order. That pace puts this year on track to beat 2025, when the division recovered a record $1.1 million through the same voluntary process. Together, the last eighteen months have returned more money to Idaho consumers through mediation than every year combined since our office started tracking these numbers in 2017.
I reorganized the Consumer Protection Division in mid-2025 to strengthen investigations and expand outreach to Idahoans who had been cheated or misled. A team of three investigators, three attorneys, and support staff now handles more than 2,000 complaints a year, filed by phone, mail, online, and through our new tool at ReportScamsIdaho.com.
Most of these disputes never need a courtroom. Voluntary mediation lets a consumer and a business communicate, compare facts, and hopefully reach a resolution without a formal finding that the law was broken. It preserves the relationship between a customer and a business that may have simply made a mistake, and it gets money back in Idahoans’ pockets faster than litigation ever could. That is the principle behind this approach: government’s job is not to manufacture conflict, it is to give people a fair and efficient way to resolve it. A courtroom should be the last resort, not the first stop.
When mediation is not enough, we act. In 2025, the division brought 49 consumer protection enforcement cases, up from 8 in 2023 and 17 in 2024, a 600 percent increase in two years. When a business’s conduct crosses the line into a violation of the Idaho Consumer Protection Act, we pursue formal enforcement, which can mean court judgments, financial penalties, and Assurances of Voluntary Compliance that require a business to change how it operates. My office also continues to litigate multistate cases and class actions, including settlements involving tobacco, opioid manufacturers, and pharmaceutical price-fixing, work that has secured tens of millions of dollars for Idaho.
For Idaho families, this means holding the contractor accountable who disappeared with the family’s deposit, or a senior citizen who was the target of a door-to-door sales scam getting their money back without hiring a lawyer they may not be able to afford. It is a mother who recognizes and reports a fake DMV text scam before it costs her family a dime. Every dollar recovered through mediation is a dollar an Idaho family did not have to fight for in court.
These numbers reflect a simple commitment that Idahoans deserve a Consumer Protection Division that moves fast, holds bad actors accountable, and respects honest businesses enough to give them a chance to make things right before the government gets involved. That is what this office was built to do, and the results over the last eighteen months show it is working. If you believe you have been the victim of fraud or deception, report it at ReportScamsIdaho.com or call 208-334-2424.
Best regards,
The Gem State Chronicle delivers daily analysis, op-eds, press releases, and Idaho Insider updates — free to your inbox.
Free newsletter · Unsubscribe anytime · View on Substack
About Raúl Labrador
Raúl Labrador is the 33rd Attorney General of Idaho. The Office of the Attorney General provides legal representation for the State of Idaho. This representation is furnished to state agencies, offices and boards in the furtherance of the state's legal interests. The office is part of state government’s executive branch and its duties are laid out in the Idaho Constitution.
