Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released its latest Supervisory Highlights report. Officials said they found unfair, deceptive, and abusive acts or practices across many consumer financial products, including auto financing.

When getting into specific findings, the CFPB said some auto finance companies have originated contracts “above the real value of the car being purchased” and engaged in illegal collection practices while servicing these contracts.

The latest edition of the Supervisory Highlights report covers findings from CFPB supervisory examinations completed from last July to March.

“Today’s report furthers our efforts to highlight conduct that violates federal law, including the prohibition on abusive practices in consumer financial services,” CFPB director Rohit Chopra said in a news release. “The CFPB is also inspecting more financial data brokers engaged in consumer reporting, as well as nonbank entities using authorities that previously went unused.”

The bureau then elaborated about their findings within auto financing.

CFPB examiners said they discovered consumers were “misled” in marketing materials by auto finance companies about the quality of vehicle they were eligible for under the terms of a credit offer.

“The pictured cars were often significantly larger, more expensive, and newer than the advertised loan offers were good for,” the CFPB said.

Examiners also found multiple instances of unfair or abusive acts or practices by servicers, including:

—Charging fraudulent interest on inflated balances

The bureau indicated servicers charged interest on contracts based on “fraudulent representations” by dealers that the vehicle had options and enhancements that it did not actually have.

“When servicers identified discrepancies, they did not reduce the amount that consumers owed on the loan agreements and continued to charge interest tied to financing of the nonexistent options,” the CFPB said.

—Cancelling automatic payments without sufficient notice, leading to unavoidable late fees

The CFPB noticed servicers did not properly notify consumers that the final payment of an installment contract often had to be made manually to close out the balance.

The bureau said consumers “were surprised when they were hit with late fees even though they had automatically paid their balance for years.”

—Engaging in illegal collection practices after repossession

The bureau said servicers engaged in the practice of “blanket cross-collateralization” by accelerating and requiring payments from all consumers on unrelated debts, such as credit cards, before consumers could reclaim their repossessed vehicles.

“The CFPB has taken action against lenders that bury key details in loan origination and servicing, deliberately setting up consumers to fall into a cycle of debt, and also took action against an auto lender that employed shoddy debt collection and credit reporting practices that tarnished consumers’ credit reports,” officials said.

The CFPB reiterated that it issued a policy statement on abusive conduct earlier this year that explains the legal prohibition on abusive conduct in consumer financial markets.

The entire 36-page Supervisory Highlights report that also delves into debt collection, mortgages and small-dollar lending can be downloaded via this website.