The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is suing Experian, claiming the nationwide consumer reporting agency is unlawfully failing to properly investigate consumer disputes.

According to a news release distributed on Tuesday, the CFPB alleges that Experian does not take sufficient steps to intake, process, investigate, and notify consumers about consumer disputes, resulting in the inclusion of incorrect information on credit reports.

The CFPB’s lawsuit seeks to stop the company’s “unlawful” conduct, to provide redress for harmed consumers, and the imposition of a civil money penalty, which would be paid into the CFPB’s victims relief fund.

“When consumers disputed errors on their credit reports, Experian conducted sham investigations rather than properly reviewing the disputes as required by federal law,” CFPB director Rohit Chopra said in the news release. “Credit reporting errors can have serious consequences for a family’s finances, and it is critical that credit reporting giants follow the law.”

The bureau recapped that the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires that consumer reporting agencies take steps to ensure consumer reports are accurate and to conduct investigations of information disputed by consumers.

Officials explained the FCRA provides people multiple ways to dispute inaccurate information on their consumer reports, including by contacting consumer reporting agencies directly.

The CFPB added that the FCRA also requires that consumer reporting agencies follow certain procedures before reinserting into consumer reports information that has previously been removed as the result of a dispute.

The CFPB alleges that Experian has violated the FCRA’s requirements for handling consumer disputes in numerous ways. Specifically, the CFPB alleges that Experian is harming consumers by:

—Conducting sham investigations that fail to properly address consumer disputes: When handling disputes, the CFPB claims Experian uses “faulty” intake procedures and does not accurately convey all relevant information about disputes to the original furnisher.

“Experian routinely and uncritically accepts the original furnisher’s response to the disputed information, even when that response was improbable or illogical on its face, or when Experian has other information available that suggests the furnisher is unreliable,” the CFPB said.

“At the conclusion of the investigation, Experian sends consumers notices that fail to inform them of the investigation results, and instead provides information that is confusing, ambiguous, incorrect, or internally inconsistent,” the bureau continued.

—Improperly reinserting inaccurate information on consumer reports: The regulator said Experian has failed to implement basic matching tools that prevent or greatly reduce the likelihood of reinsertion by a new furnisher of a previously deleted tradeline.

Instead, the CFPB claimed Experian improperly reinserts inaccurate information into consumer reports because it fails to match newly reported information with records of previously deleted information.

“Consumers who have disputed the accuracy of an account and thought that their consumer report had been corrected, instead see the same inaccurate information reappear on their consumer report without explanation under the name of a new furnisher,” the bureau said.

In addition to alleging violations of the FCRA’s requirements, the CFPB alleges that Experian’s faulty dispute intake procedures and failure to provide furnishers with consumer-submitted documentation, uncritical deference to furnishers’ responses to disputed information, and failure to prevent improper tradeline reinsertions also violate the Consumer Financial Protection Act’s prohibition on unfair acts or practices.

Under the Consumer Financial Protection Act, the CFPB said it has the authority to take action against institutions violating consumer financial protection laws, including the FCRA and the prohibitions on unfair, deceptive, or abusive acts or practices in the CFPA.