The Level One Law lawsuit is an active federal enforcement action filed in January 2024 by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and seven state attorneys general, which names Michel Law LLC (doing business as Level One Law) as one of roughly 30 “façade” law firms allegedly used by Strategic Financial Solutions to charge illegal upfront debt-relief fees. A court-appointed receiver took over operations in January 2024, a preliminary injunction followed in March 2024, and as of mid-2026 the case is still in litigation with no general consumer restitution fund in place — though a separate 2025 court order required payment processors to return balances sitting in consumers’ dedicated accounts.
What the Federal Case Says About Level One Law
The complaint was filed on January 10, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York (case number 1:24-cv-00040) against StratFS LLC (formerly Strategic Financial Solutions), its parent Strategic Family Inc., dozens of affiliated entities, and four individual defendants: Ryan Sasson, Jason Blust, Daniel Blumkin, and Albert Ian Behar. The joining attorneys general came from New York, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
A second amended complaint filed on May 28, 2024, identifies Michel Law LLC, doing business as Level One Law, as one of the façade firms within the SFS enterprise. According to the CFPB, these firms partnered with StratFS on paper to promise debt relief services while performing “little to no work on behalf of consumers.” The actual client contact, negotiation, and billing were handled by non-attorney SFS employees and its client-services subsidiaries.
The government’s theory is that SFS built the law-firm structure to sidestep rules that bar non-attorney debt relief companies from charging advance fees. Mailers advertised consolidation loans; when consumers responded, call-center staff steered most of them into a debt settlement program instead and assigned them to one of the affiliated firms. Many of those firms had only one or two licensed attorneys nominally responsible for thousands of clients, operated out of virtual offices or mailboxes, and let SFS employees answer the phones using whichever firm name matched the incoming call. SFS drafted retainer agreements, arranged notarized signatures, and kept the bulk of the monthly fees; the law firms received roughly 3% to 10%.
The New York Attorney General cited examples in which about 84% of one consumer’s payments went to fees rather than creditors, and another consumer paid more than $7,000 before any money reached a creditor at all. Across the enterprise, the government alleges more than $84 million was collected in unlawful fees.
Level One Law’s BBB profile lists Lori A. Leigh as its managing member. BBB records tie her to several other debt-relief and legal entities, including Phoenix Legal Group, Frontier Consumer Law Group, Legal Helpers Debt Resolution, Greenstone Legal Group, and Leigh Legal Group. Legal Helpers was previously shut down by the Illinois Attorney General, and two of its managing partners were disbarred over a similar model. Sasson and Blust are both former Legal Helpers employees.
The Court Orders That Shut the Firm Down
On January 11, 2024, Judge Lawrence J. Vilardo granted a temporary restraining order and appointed Thomas W. McNamara as temporary receiver over the defendants’ operations. The receiver secured offices in Manhattan and Buffalo, changed locks and alarm codes, and served asset-freeze notices on Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and TD Bank. Roughly $7.2 million in account balances was frozen.
On March 4, 2024, the court entered a preliminary injunction that barred the defendants and their associated law firms from collecting advance fees and confirmed the receivership. The court preliminarily determined that the defendants and the intervenor law firms had violated the federal Telemarketing Sales Rule.
The receiver’s January 2024 preliminary report concluded that SFS’s law-firm debt relief model, which accounted for roughly 80% of the company’s revenue, “cannot in my good faith determination be operated lawfully.” In a sample of 100 January 2024 sales calls, all 100 consumers were offered debt-relief services and only five were offered consolidation loans.
Most of the façade law firms that had intervened in the case withdrew from client representation by December 2024, and a November 2024 court order confirmed those withdrawals did not conflict with the preliminary injunction.
Where the Case Stands
The litigation remains active. A settlement conference on March 31, 2026, did not produce a resolution, and the court is expected to open formal discovery. Several motions to dismiss are still pending, though the court denied one filed by relief defendant Jaclyn Blust in September 2025, and she then answered the complaint.
The Second Circuit denied the defendants’ challenge to the preliminary injunction in June 2025, leaving it fully in effect. In January 2026, the same court dismissed an appeal by Fidelis Legal Support Services, the Bush Lake Trust, Two Square Enterprises, BDC Group, and Veteris Capital, confirming their status as receivership defendants. Contempt proceedings against Lit Def Strategies and Jason Blust remain stayed pending a separate Fidelis-related appeal. In July 2025, the plaintiffs reached stipulated preliminary injunctions with defendants Michelle Gallagher, Timothy Burnette, and Richard Gustafson II.
Getting Money Back
No general claims process or consumer restitution fund has been established, and the broader question of restitution from seized assets remains open while the case proceeds.
One court order has directly returned money to consumers. Under a January 7, 2025 order, payment processors Global Holdings LLC and RAM Payment LLC were required to close consumer accounts that had no active payment plans and return the balances to consumers’ bank accounts within 30 days. For consumers still on active plans, refunds were to follow within 45 days of the final payment. If a processor could not send funds back to a bank account (for instance, if the account had been closed), it was required to take reasonable steps to contact the consumer and arrange another method.
The receiver has stated that money in consumers’ dedicated accounts belongs to the consumers, not to the receivership estate. Court orders, status reports, and consumer notices are posted at regulatoryresolutions.com, the receiver’s website.
If you paid Level One Law and never received a refund from your dedicated account, the processor holding that account is the first place to check. If your money was already taken as fees rather than sitting in the dedicated account, there is currently no restitution mechanism, and any recovery will depend on how the underlying case is resolved.
A Separate Individual Lawsuit in Florida
In November 2025, a consumer named Juliette D. Stotler filed an individual lawsuit against Michel Law LLC d/b/a Level One Law in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The complaint alleges violations of the federal Credit Repair Organizations Act, the Florida Credit Services Organizations Act, the Florida Credit Counseling Services Act, and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, claiming the firm misrepresented its services, failed to resolve debts, and charged fees before performing services. It is a single-plaintiff case, not a class action.
A separate class action, Briggs v. Strategic Financial Solutions LLC, is pending in the Northern District of Illinois, but Level One Law is not a named defendant in that case.
What Consumers Are Reporting
Level One Law holds an F rating from the Better Business Bureau, which notes the firm failed to respond to 155 of 189 complaints filed over a three-year period. The complaints follow a consistent pattern. Clients paid monthly fees, sometimes $800 or more, for months or years, then discovered that creditors had not been contacted and debts had not been settled. Some clients who stopped paying creditors on the firm’s advice were sued, had wages garnished, or watched their credit collapse. Individual losses reported on BBB, Yelp, and Trustpilot commonly run from $4,000 to $6,000 or more.
Several BBB complainants said that when they requested refunds after January 2024, Level One Law pointed to the pending federal litigation as a reason it could not return the money. One reviewer reported being told, after paying $6,000, that recovery was unlikely because the firm was being sued by several states.