The FTC complaint is pretty detailed:
* Jason owned 1/3 of Swish, and was a company director.
* Hundreds of thousands of people were signed up for cards.
* Thousands complained to the FTC, the BBB, banks, and police departments.
* Only a tiny fraction ever activated the card.
* By Jason's own admission, the FTC went after Swish after Swish handed over a huge amount of information about their operations.
* According to the FTC, Jason's company operated the websites perpetrating the scam.
* The bounties paid to Swish for card signups were at many points the single largest source of Swish's profits.
* The FTC has evidence of Jason himself arguing to continue operating the scam, because "all the margin currently comes from this product".
* Swish operated 26 different websites, with names like "CheckCashCentrale.com" and "InstantPaydayMatchup.com".
* The bolded page headlines made mention of the payday loan terms, but not the (unrelated) VISA/MC signup.
* The home page had no statement that applicants would be signing up for a VISA/MC.
* The call-to-action buttons on the site, which read "Get matched for a loan" --- not "Buy this loan" --- snuck in acceptance of a VISA/MC offer (the FTC complaint goes into more detail than I will on this).
The only thing Jason alleges to be "broken" about this process is the cost to him of taking the case to court, even though his lawyers assured him he'd win. In other words, the "breakage" is utterly dependent on the alleged opinions of his lawyer. What, exactly, do you think the FTC should have done differently here?
Match Jason's account of what happened --- the innocent VP/Engineering of a company, a guy who "didn't have any control over marketing and advertising", getting taken to court over the actions of another company selling "a product" --- to the specifics of the FTC's complaint. Even if Jason could possibly have prevailed in court, how much credibility does he have with you right now?