How MCA Arbitration Clauses Work — and When They Fail

Published September 4, 2026  |  CredibleLaw Editorial Desk  |  Merchant Cash Advance

New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued the private arbitration platform Rapid Ruling, alleging it was not a neutral forum at all but a collections instrument designed with, and for, the merchant cash advance industry. The verified petition, filed June 8, 2026 in Supreme Court, New York County, describes a forum whose rules were drafted by an MCA funder, whose arbitrators were trained on sample awards that rejected every merchant defense, and whose docket produced a single merchant victory in three years — and that one only because the funder filed the wrong contract.

For any business owner who has ever received an arbitration demand out of the blue and thrown it away, the petition reads less like a press release and more like a manual. It explains exactly how a $50 filing fee becomes a New York money judgment, and it identifies the pressure points where that machinery can break. If you are facing a claim right now, start with our overview of merchant cash advance lawsuit defense and then read on.

The case at a glance

Item	Detail
Case	People of the State of New York v. Mediation and Civil Arbitration, Inc., d/b/a RapidRuling, Zachary Meyer, and Andrew Sachs
Court / Index	Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County — Index No. 452192/2026
Filed	June 8, 2026 (NYSCEF Doc. No. 1 received June 9, 2026)
Claims	Executive Law § 63(12) — repeated and persistent fraud and illegality; General Business Law § 349 — deceptive acts and practices, and abusive acts and practices under the FAIR Business Practices Act amendment effective February 17, 2026
Central allegation	Rapid Ruling marketed itself as neutral and independent while its arbitration rules were drafted and edited by a financially interested MCA claimant
Scale alleged	Roughly 2,760 matters as of March 30, 2023; over 97% uncontested; one merchant prevailed in a contested case in the platform’s first three years
Relief sought	Permanent injunction, dismissal without prejudice of pending MCA arbitrations, a ban on serving the MCA industry, an accounting, restitution and damages, disgorgement, and a $5,000 civil penalty per MCA arbitration administered
Status	Allegations only. As of publication the respondents have not been found liable, and no public response from Rapid Ruling, Meyer, or Sachs has been reported.

A collection vacuum, and the business built to fill it

To understand why Rapid Ruling exists, you have to start with what New York took away in 2019.

For years, MCA funders required merchants to sign a confession of judgment at the outset of the deal — a pre-signed admission of liability that let a funder walk into a New York courthouse after an alleged default and walk out with a judgment, no lawsuit required. Bloomberg’s reporting on the practice prompted S.6395, which amended CPLR § 3218 effective August 30, 2019 to bar the filing of confessions of judgment against defendants who did not reside in New York when they signed. The sponsor’s memorandum described funders executing confessions in New York against debtors with no connection to the state, letting “unscrupulous creditors” freeze and seize assets while making it hard for debtors to contest the conduct. Our explainer on confession of judgment abuse in the MCA industry covers that history in depth.

According to the petition, LCF Group, Inc. — formerly Last Chance Funding — saw the amendment as creating a “vacuum” in its ability to collect quickly from out-of-state merchants, and tasked its general counsel, Adam Feldman, with finding an alternative. Feldman approached two New York attorneys, Zachary Meyer and Andrew Sachs. Rapid Ruling was incorporated under New York law on September 27, 2019 — about one month after the confession-of-judgment ban took effect.

The AG alleges LCF was offered a direct ownership stake and that Meyer and Sachs decided against it, out of concern that it would create an “appearance of impropriety.” The relationship continued anyway, off the organizational documents: LCF’s counsel allegedly helped shape the website, helped set up the email account, and set up the PayPal account used to collect arbitration fees. When Rapid Ruling redesigned its site in 2021, the petition says LCF referred it to the person who managed LCF’s own website — who was then hired to handle the redesign, provide SEO support, and write blog posts.

If the confession of judgment was the old shortcut, an arbitration award confirmed under CPLR Article 75 was the replacement. Every arbitration LCF filed with Rapid Ruling, the petition alleges, named an out-of-state merchant — precisely the population CPLR § 3218 had put out of reach. For the current state of play, see our guide to MCA laws in New York and the multi-state comparison in merchant cash advance laws by state.

Who wrote the rules

The heart of the petition is a document trail. The AG alleges Feldman sent Meyer an initial draft of the arbitration rules on August 6, 2019 — weeks before the CPLR amendment took effect — and that Feldman, Meyer, and Sachs exchanged at least six drafts over the following four months, with Feldman at points blind-copying LCF’s then-CEO and referring to work performed for his “client.” Meyer and Sachs, the AG says, accepted virtually every change LCF proposed. No merchant was invited to comment on the rules before publication.

Set against how a neutral commercial forum ordinarily operates, the alleged edits form a pattern:

Provision	As alleged to have been changed	Effect on the merchant
Time to answer a claim	Reduced from 15 days to 7 days (later lengthened to 14 only after the AG’s investigation began)	A default award before counsel can be retained
Service of the claim	Permitted by email	Notice lands in an inbox nobody monitors
Service of the award	Deemed delivered by email “without regard for” the message being filtered to spam	The 90-day clock to challenge may run unseen
Discovery	Available only on “good cause shown” rather than on request	No way to test the funder’s numbers
Discovery as of right	Threshold raised from $25,000 to $1 million in controversy	Effectively unavailable in nearly every MCA case
Claimant’s own default	A claimant who missed a counterclaim deadline was merely “deemed to deny”	The default penalty ran one direction only
Time to comply with an award	Reduced from 10 days to 7 (later restored to 10)	Faster path to enforcement

Arbitrator selection was equally closed. From March 2020 until April 2022, the AG alleges, the entire arbitrator panel consisted of Meyer and Sachs — the same two people who had built the forum with LCF and depended on MCA filings for their arbitration income. They issued hundreds of awards during that period and, according to the petition, never issued conflict disclosures at all. When the merchant in Rapid Ruling’s very first arbitration asked Meyer directly to confirm the platform was not owned or operated by LCF or affiliated with any MCA supplier, the AG alleges Meyer declined to answer.

After the panel expanded in 2022, Meyer allegedly trained each new arbitrator personally, telling them MCA disputes were the predominant matter type and walking them through “the framework for analysis that I would apply if I were the arbitrator.” New arbitrators were sent two sample awards — one contested, one uncontested — both ruling entirely for LCF. The petition alleges that in dozens of contested matters, arbitrators reproduced the sample’s usury analysis verbatim, including the same typographical error — a “three three-factor” phrase carried from the template into the awards.

Compensation pointed the same direction. Arbitrators were paid hourly for contested matters but a flat $50 to $75 for an uncontested award, no matter how much review it took. The AG’s characterization is blunt: the structure paid arbitrators to produce default awards quickly and spend as little time as possible on each one.

The numbers

Of approximately 2,760 matters pending or completed as of March 30, 2023, the petition states that only 82 — under 3% — were contested by the merchant. The remaining 2,688 were resolved with no answer or opposition filed at all. Nearly all of those uncontested matters were resolved in the claimant’s favor.

Among the 82 contested matters, the AG alleges the merchant prevailed exactly once, and that outcome came from a filing error: LCF submitted the wrong contract, and the arbitrator dismissed the matter without prejudice shortly before the hearing. Outside of that single case, the petition alleges Rapid Ruling did not administer a single arbitration in its first three years in which a merchant appeared and ultimately prevailed. Meyer testified he could not recall ever sustaining a merchant’s usury defense while serving as an arbitrator.

The forum’s revenue came exclusively from filing and arbitrator fees, and the AG alleges those fees were typically folded into the final award — meaning the MCA claimant that started the case did not ultimately pay for the process. Present fees cited in the petition include $350 to file a claim up to $50,000, $575 for claims between $50,000 and $250,000, $50 to move for an uncontested award, and arbitrator time at $350 per hour or more.

From award to frozen account

An arbitration award is not self-executing. It becomes dangerous at the next step, and that step is fast by design.

1. The funder petitions a New York court to confirm the award. Under CPLR 7510, a court shall confirm an award on application made within one year of delivery, unless it is vacated or modified on a ground in CPLR 7511. Confirmation proceeds as a special proceeding — quicker than a plenary action, and reviewed with substantial deference to the arbitrator.
2. Confirmation produces a money judgment. At that point the case stops being about the merits of the advance.
3. The judgment is enforced. In New York that means a restraining notice under CPLR 5222, a bank levy, and often a frozen operating account before the owner understands what happened.
4. Out-of-state judgments follow. A New York judgment travels to the merchant’s home state under that state’s sister-state enforcement statute.

That pipeline is why the seven-day answer window and email service mattered so much. A merchant who never opened the email never appeared, never appeared means no defense on record, no defense on record means an award, and an award confirmed is a judgment. Our MCA lawsuit timeline for New York maps the same sequence for court-filed cases, and the first 48 hours after an MCA lawsuit covers what to do when the paperwork lands.

Courts were already trimming these awards

The AG’s petition is not the first judicial skepticism of Rapid Ruling awards. It collects several decisions, and they are worth knowing because they show which arguments have actually worked:

• Legacy Capital 26, LLC v. Chaldean Enterprise, LLC, No. 22-cv-05758 (LJL), 2023 WL 5530307 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 28, 2023) — a federal judge denied a motion to compel arbitration and granted discovery into the relationship between Rapid Ruling and the MCA industry, writing that the inordinate number of awards favoring the industry, the fees the arbitrator would earn, and the arbitrator’s reliance on a single source of business together raised the alarm that the forum existed solely to enforce MCA agreements in the industry’s favor.
• LCF Group v. Fields, 76 Misc. 3d 1222(A) (Sup. Ct. 2022) — a court denied an unopposed petition to confirm and vacated the award on its own motion as irrational, where the award exceeded four times the amount the funder had remitted and the arbitrator gave no colorable explanation for the total.
• AKF v. Leo Kieu Sole Prop, No. 650639/2024, 2024 WL 3745175 (Sup. Ct. Aug. 8, 2024) — the court vacated the attorney’s fee portion of an unopposed award on its own motion, finding no identified basis for it in the award or the contract.
• AKF v. Limitless Wireless, No. 654888/2024, 2025 WL 3298047 (Sup. Ct. Nov. 20, 2025) — a 33% fee award issued without analysis of the relevant factors was unwarranted in what the court described as a routine matter run on boilerplate.
• AKF v. Le Nid Consortium Intern., No. 654016/2024, 2025 WL 3540809 (Sup. Ct. Dec. 4, 2025) — the arbitrator exceeded her power by awarding fees the underlying agreement did not authorize.
• AKF v. Eshg Kent Island, No. 652142/2025, 2026 WL 400813 (Sup. Ct. Feb. 5, 2026) — a “breach administration fee” was a clear unenforceable penalty, grossly disproportionate to the breach, and confirming it would violate strong public policy.

Two patterns stand out. First, courts have been most willing to intervene on the add-ons — attorneys’ fees, administration fees, penalty-flavored charges — rather than the underlying advance. Second, several of these were unopposed petitions where the court acted on its own motion, which tells you how visible the defects were on the face of the awards. Merchants who do appear have considerably more to work with; see MCA legal defenses and how to move to dismiss an MCA lawsuit in New York.

What the Attorney General is asking for

The petition’s demand for relief is unusually operational. Among other things, it asks the court to:

• Permanently enjoin the respondents from the alleged fraudulent, deceptive, and abusive practices;
• Order the dismissal without prejudice of all MCA-related arbitrations pending before Rapid Ruling’s panel as of the date of the order;
• Bar the respondents from providing arbitration services to any company that offers or participates in offering merchant cash advances, and from marketing to them;
• Require an accounting of all filing and arbitrator fees received in connection with MCA arbitrations;
• Impose a civil penalty of $5,000 for each MCA arbitration administered, under GBL § 350-d;
• Order restitution and damages to all affected merchants, known or unknown, and disgorgement of profits.

The abusiveness counts rest on a recent change in New York law. The FAIR Business Practices Act amendment to GBL § 349, effective February 17, 2026, added “abusive” acts and practices to the statute’s prohibitions — reaching conduct that materially interferes with a person’s ability to understand a term or takes unreasonable advantage of their lack of understanding or their reasonable reliance. That is why the petition specifically alleges at least fifteen uncontested awards issued after February 17, 2026, some as recent as April 21, 2026, with petitions to confirm pending in New York County.

The AG’s office has been building this record for years. In September 2023 it won an order against Richmond Capital Group and affiliates requiring debt cancellation and repayment of interest and overcharges, and in January 2025 it announced a $1 billion settlement with a network of 25 lending companies controlled by Yellowstone Capital, including over $534 million in debt relief. Our page on Yellowstone Capital lawsuit defense covers what that settlement did and did not resolve.

Part Two: How MCA Arbitration Clauses Work — and When They Fail

The Rapid Ruling petition is about one forum. The mechanism it describes is industry-wide. Understanding the clause itself is what turns a scary letter into a set of decisions.

Anatomy of the clause

A typical MCA arbitration provision sits deep in a form agreement and does four things at once. It compels arbitration of all disputes. It names a specific forum and incorporates that forum’s rules by reference — which means the funder is choosing the procedure, not just the venue. It waives jury trial and, frequently, class participation. And it sets the seat, which determines which court will later be asked to confirm the award. The petition notes that Rapid Ruling published a sample arbitration clause on its own website that MCA companies inserted into their form agreements.

Read alongside the rest of the contract, the clause rarely operates alone. It usually sits next to a personal guarantee, a security interest in receivables, and a New York choice-of-law and forum provision. Each has its own defenses — see MCA personal guarantee lawsuits in New York, MCA venue clause defense, and MCA contract defense in New York.

Why funders prefer arbitration

Speed and deference. An award goes to court as a special proceeding to confirm, not as a lawsuit to be litigated, and New York courts are obligated to give substantial deference to an arbitrator’s decision. A merchant’s substantive defenses — that the advance was in truth a disguised usurious loan, that the funder refused a good-faith reconciliation request, that the transaction violates New York usury law — are supposed to be heard by the arbitrator, and a court reviewing the award afterward will not simply re-decide them.

That deference is the whole point, and it is also the vulnerability. Deference is extended to arbitration because arbitration is presumed to be a neutral adjudication. Where the neutrality is missing, the presumption is doing work it was never meant to do — which is precisely the argument the Attorney General is making.

Four pressure points where these clauses fail

1. No valid agreement to arbitrate was ever formed

Before deference attaches, there has to be an agreement. Signature defects, the wrong entity named, a clause pointing to a forum that no longer administers such cases, an unauthorized signer, or a successor funder claiming rights under an assignment it cannot document — all go to formation, not to the merits. This is the strongest ground for a merchant who never appeared, because CPLR 7511(b)(2) expressly gives a party who neither participated in the arbitration nor was served with a notice of intention to arbitrate the right to argue that no valid agreement to arbitrate was made.

2. Evident partiality and forum bias

Under 9 U.S.C. § 10(a), a federal court may vacate an award procured by corruption, fraud, or undue means; where there was evident partiality or corruption in the arbitrators; where arbitrators refused to postpone a hearing on sufficient cause or refused to hear pertinent evidence; or where the arbitrators exceeded their powers. New York’s parallel provision, CPLR 7511(b)(1), covers corruption, fraud or misconduct in procuring the award, partiality of an arbitrator appointed as a neutral, an arbitrator exceeding his power, and failure to follow Article 75’s procedure.

Bias arguments have historically been hard: the burden is heavy, courts apply a clear-and-convincing standard to misconduct and bias allegations, and disappointment with the outcome is not partiality. What changes the picture is documentary evidence about the forum itself rather than the individual arbitrator — undisclosed financial dependence, rules authored by a repeat claimant, template awards. That is the category of evidence the Legacy Capital court found sufficient to justify discovery in 2023, and the category the AG’s petition now assembles at scale.

3. The arbitrator exceeded his or her power

This is the ground with the best recent track record in the Rapid Ruling line of cases, and it is narrower than it sounds. If the agreement does not authorize attorneys’ fees, an arbitrator awarding them has exceeded the submission. If a fee is a penalty grossly disproportionate to the breach, confirming it can offend public policy. If the arithmetic produces a number several times what the merchant actually received with no explanation, the award may be completely irrational. Courts reached each of those conclusions in the decisions collected above — several of them without a merchant appearing at all.

4. The clause is unconscionable or the process was not arbitration

There is a line of authority holding that when one side writes procedural rules so one-sided that the process is a sham, it has breached the very agreement it is trying to enforce; the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Hooters of America, Inc. v. Phillips, 173 F.3d 933 (4th Cir. 1999), is the classic statement. New York courts have likewise described arbitration as a process in which a neutral third party decides after a hearing at which both parties have an opportunity to be heard — a definition the AG’s petition quotes deliberately. Where the asserted forum does not meet that definition, the argument is not that the merchant should win the arbitration; it is that what happened was not an arbitration.

The clock: deadlines that decide these cases

Trigger	Deadline	Why it matters
Notice of intention to arbitrate served (CPLR 7503(c))	20 days to apply to stay arbitration	Miss it and objections to the arbitration’s validity are generally precluded
Arbitration award delivered (CPLR 7511(a))	90 days to apply to vacate or modify	The single most commonly missed deadline in MCA arbitration
Award delivered (CPLR 7510)	Funder has one year to petition to confirm	The quiet period where a merchant may not know anything is pending
Judgment entered	Enforcement begins	Restraining notices and levies follow; relief now requires vacating a judgment, not an award

The email-service rules matter here more than anywhere else. If an award is deemed delivered when it hits a spam folder, the 90-day window under CPLR 7511(a) can expire before the merchant learns the case existed. That is why the vacating an MCA default judgment in New York analysis and the MCA default judgment overview matter even for merchants who think the matter is long over.

How CPLR 7511 treats you differently depending on whether you showed up

	Participated, or was served with notice of intention to arbitrate	Neither participated nor was served with notice
Governing provision	CPLR 7511(b)(1)	CPLR 7511(b)(2)
Corruption, fraud, misconduct in procuring the award	Available	Available
Partiality of an arbitrator appointed as a neutral	Available	Available
Arbitrator exceeded power / imperfect execution	Available	Available
Failure to follow Article 75 procedure	Available, unless you continued with notice of the defect and no objection	Available
No valid agreement to arbitrate was made	Not listed	Available
The agreement to arbitrate was not complied with	Not listed	Available
Claim time-barred under CPLR 7502(b)	Not listed	Available

Read that table twice if you defaulted. Counterintuitively, the merchant who never appeared has more statutory grounds available — including the fundamental argument that no valid agreement to arbitrate was ever made — than the merchant who participated. What the non-appearing merchant does not have is time; the 90-day clock in CPLR 7511(a) runs regardless.

This has happened before

In July 2009, the Minnesota Attorney General sued the National Arbitration Forum, then the country’s largest administrator of consumer arbitrations, alleging consumer fraud, deceptive trade practices, and false advertising, with the complaint centering on undisclosed ties between the forum and the debt-collection industry. NAF settled within days, agreeing under a consent judgment to stop administering consumer arbitrations effective July 24, 2009. The American Arbitration Association followed with its own moratorium on consumer debt collection arbitrations, and the FTC’s 2010 staff report described the combined result as a de facto moratorium on the arbitration of consumer debt collection matters.

The parallel is instructive but not exact. NAF handled consumer disputes; Rapid Ruling’s docket is commercial, between funders and businesses, which sits outside most consumer-protection frameworks — a distinction the MCA industry has relied on for years. What the NAF episode does show is the practical aftershock: when a named forum stops administering a category of case, every contract that names it has a problem, and courts spend the following years sorting out what happens to clauses pointing at a forum that will not hear the case. Any merchant with a Rapid Ruling clause should be watching this docket for exactly that reason.

What this does not mean

Accuracy matters more than momentum here, so a few limits are worth stating plainly.

• These are allegations. A verified petition is a pleading, not a finding. Rapid Ruling, Meyer, and Sachs have not been found liable, and they are entitled to contest every allegation described above.
• An AG action does not cancel your award. Even if the Attorney General prevails in full, the relief sought includes dismissal of pending arbitrations and restitution — it is not an automatic vacatur of every award already confirmed into a judgment. Merchants with existing judgments will still need to pursue their own relief, and the ordinary deadlines still apply.
• Not every MCA is a disguised loan. New York courts assess reconciliation provisions, whether the term is finite, and whether the funder bears the risk of the merchant’s genuine business failure. Some agreements survive that analysis. A defense has to be built on the specific contract.
• Arbitration is not inherently improper. The claim in this case is not that MCA disputes cannot be arbitrated; it is that this particular forum was not neutral. A properly administered arbitration before an established neutral provider raises entirely different questions.

What merchants should do now

• Find the clause. Locate the arbitration provision in your agreement and note the named forum, the response deadline, the seat, and the service method.
• Search your email — including spam and quarantine — for the forum’s domain and for the funder’s name. Filed-away notices are the single most common reason merchants default.
• Check New York court records for a petition to confirm naming your business. Awards are often confirmed in New York County regardless of where you operate; see MCA lawsuits in the New York Commercial Division.
• Date every document. Award delivery date, notice date, judgment entry date. The 20-day, 90-day, and one-year windows all key off specific dates, and reconstructing them later is far harder.
• Preserve everything about the arbitration itself — the rules version you were sent, the arbitrator’s disclosure (or absence of one), the fee invoices, and the award. Forum-bias arguments are documentary.
• Do not wait for the AG case to resolve. Your deadlines run on their own schedule. If you are already facing enforcement, review how to stop an MCA restraining notice in New York and jurisdiction defenses for out-of-state merchants.
• Get the agreement in front of a licensed attorney in the relevant jurisdiction. Whether your best argument is formation, partiality, excess of power, or the fee add-ons depends entirely on your documents.

Facing an MCA arbitration demand or a petition to confirm?

CredibleLaw is a national legal resource and attorney referral network — not a law firm. We connect business owners with independent attorneys who handle merchant cash advance lawsuit defense, including arbitration challenges, petitions to vacate, and judgment enforcement. Start with our MCA defense overview, find New York MCA defense help, or call 888-201-0441 to be matched with an attorney in the right jurisdiction. Ongoing coverage is collected on our merchant cash advance news page.

Frequently asked questions

Does the Attorney General’s lawsuit automatically cancel my Rapid Ruling award?

No. The petition asks the court to order dismissal without prejudice of MCA arbitrations pending before Rapid Ruling as of the date of any order, plus restitution and damages. It does not, by itself, vacate awards that have already been confirmed into judgments. Merchants with existing awards or judgments still need to pursue relief through the ordinary channels and within the ordinary deadlines.

I never responded to the arbitration. Is it too late?

It depends entirely on dates, and it is worth checking rather than assuming. A party who neither participated nor was served with a notice of intention to arbitrate has broader grounds under CPLR 7511(b)(2) — including that no valid agreement to arbitrate was made — but the 90-day application window in CPLR 7511(a) runs from delivery of the award. If a judgment has already been entered, the analysis shifts to vacating the judgment.

How did an arbitration get filed against my business in New York when I have never operated there?

MCA agreements typically contain New York choice-of-law and forum provisions, and the arbitration clause sets the seat. The petition alleges that every arbitration LCF filed with Rapid Ruling named an out-of-state merchant, and that this was the point — the platform was allegedly built after New York barred confessions of judgment against non-residents in 2019.

What is the difference between a confession of judgment and an arbitration award?

A confession of judgment is signed up front and converted into a judgment administratively. An arbitration award results from a proceeding and must be confirmed by a court before it becomes a judgment. CPLR § 3218, as amended effective August 30, 2019, bars filing confessions of judgment against defendants who did not reside in New York when they signed.

Which arguments have actually worked against these awards?

In the decisions collected in the AG’s petition, courts most often trimmed the add-ons: attorneys’ fees awarded without a contractual basis or without analysis, and penalty-flavored administration fees disproportionate to the breach. One court vacated an award as irrational where the total exceeded four times what the funder had remitted. A federal court also allowed discovery into the forum’s relationship with the MCA industry rather than compelling arbitration.

Can I argue the advance was really a usurious loan?

That defense exists, but it is fact-specific and does not apply to every agreement. New York courts look at reconciliation rights, whether the repayment term is finite, and whether the funder truly bears the risk of the merchant’s genuine business failure. The AG alleges Rapid Ruling’s arbitrators were trained on sample awards that rejected the usury defense, which is a separate problem from whether the defense is good.

Does the FAIR Business Practices Act change anything for merchants?

The amendment to GBL § 349, effective February 17, 2026, added abusive acts and practices to what the statute prohibits, reaching conduct that materially interferes with someone’s ability to understand a term or takes unreasonable advantage of their lack of understanding or reasonable reliance. In this petition it supports two of the five causes of action and is the reason awards issued after that date are called out specifically.

Rapid Ruling says it is in Texas now. Does that matter?

The AG alleges the Texas move was cosmetic — that days after Meyer’s testimony in the investigation, the founders incorporated an identically named Texas entity, merged the New York corporation into it, amended the rules to say arbitrations are deemed to take place in Dallas, and listed an address that is advertised online as a virtual mailbox, while continuing to run the business from New York and continuing to issue awards listing New York as the place of arbitration.

My funder used a different arbitration forum. Is any of this relevant?

The specific allegations concern one platform. The framework does not: the questions of whether a valid agreement to arbitrate exists, whether the neutral disclosed financial ties, whether the arbitrator exceeded the submission in awarding fees, and whether you are inside the statutory deadlines apply to any arbitration award a funder is trying to confirm.

Is CredibleLaw a law firm?

No. CredibleLaw is a national legal resource and attorney referral network covering multiple practice areas. We do not provide legal advice or legal representation. We connect business owners with independent attorneys licensed in the relevant jurisdiction.

Sources and further reading

• Office of the New York State Attorney General — press release, June 8, 2026
• Verified Petition, People v. Mediation and Civil Arbitration, Inc. d/b/a RapidRuling (N.Y. Sup. Ct., Index No. 452192/2026)
• NY OAG — $1 billion settlement with lenders controlled by Yellowstone Capital (January 2025)
• NY OAG — court order against Richmond Capital Group and affiliates (September 2023)
• N.Y. CPLR § 7511 — Vacating or modifying award
• 9 U.S.C. § 10 — Federal Arbitration Act, grounds for vacatur
• FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection staff report on debt collection (2010), discussing the National Arbitration Forum consent judgment

Disclaimer: CredibleLaw is a legal resource and attorney referral network, not a law firm, and does not provide legal advice or legal representation. This article reports on allegations contained in a publicly filed verified petition; those allegations are unproven, and the respondents are entitled to contest them. Nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship. Statutes, court rules, and case law change, and outcomes depend on the specific facts and documents in each matter. Consult a licensed attorney in the applicable jurisdiction before acting on anything in this article.