What Is a Settlement Administrator — and Which Company Sent Your Letter?
If an envelope or email arrived from a company you don't recognize — Kroll, Epiq, JND Legal Administration, Rust Consulting, Simpluris, Angeion Group, CPT Group, Atticus Administration, A.B. Data, Verita, Analytics Consulting, RG/2 Claims, Phoenix Settlement Administrators, Cyberscout or IDX — it almost always means one of two things: a lawsuit involving a company you did business with has settled and a federal court ordered you notified, or that company had a data breach and state law requires it to tell you directly. Neither is a scam by default, but neither means "you have money waiting" either. This page explains what a settlement administrator is and is not under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23, how a federal court actually supervises one, five concrete steps to check any notice against a real case, and which company is behind the specific envelope in your hand.
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Reviewed by Leonard Goldberg, Editor · Last updated
What a Settlement Administrator Actually Is
A class-action settlement administrator — also called a claims administrator or notice administrator — is a private company hired by the parties to a lawsuit and approved by a court to run the mechanics of a class settlement: finding and notifying class members, operating the settlement website and call center, receiving and checking claims, processing opt-outs, calculating each person's award, and sending the money. It is not a law firm, not one of the parties, and not part of the court. The whole process runs on Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. Under Rule 23(e), a class action's claims “may be settled, voluntarily dismissed, or compromised only with the court's approval.” Under Rule 23(c)(2)(B), for the most common type of class (a damages class certified under Rule 23(b)(3)), “the court must direct to class members the best notice that is practicable under the circumstances, including individual notice to all members who can be identified through reasonable effort.” For the less common (b)(1) and (b)(2) classes, Rule 23(c)(2)(A) only requires that “the court may direct appropriate notice to the class” — notice there is discretionary, not automatic. Administrators exist to carry out that notice requirement at scale, and courts do not let them operate as free agents: the Northern District of California's own guidance to litigants states, “The parties are expected to get multiple competing bids from potential settlement administrators.”
Case Details
Appointment. The administrator is chosen by the parties and approved by the court in the preliminary-approval order, and the court also controls its fee. Northern District of California guidance requires the preliminary-approval motion to “Identify the proposed settlement administrator, the settlement administrator selection process, how many settlement administrators submitted proposals, what methods of notice and claims payment were proposed, and the lead class counsel's firms' history of engagements with the settlement administrator over the last two years,” plus a description of “the settlement administrator's procedures for securely handling class member data (including technical, administrative, and physical controls; retention; destruction; audits; crisis response; etc.), the settlement administrator's acceptance of responsibility and maintenance of insurance in case of errors, the anticipated administrative costs...” Even then the court keeps the last word on cost: “The court may not approve the amount of the cost award to the settlement administrator until the final approval hearing.”
What they may do: mail and e-mail the court-approved notice and run any publication or digital notice the court ordered; operate the official settlement website, which “lists key deadlines and has links to the notice, claim form (if any), preliminary approval order, motions for preliminary and final approval and for attorneys' fees, and any other important documents in the case”; run the toll-free hotline printed on the notice; receive and validate claim forms and receive opt-out letters — the notice tells members who want out to “send a letter ... to the settlement administrator and/or the person or entity designated to receive opt outs”; and calculate and pay awards, later filing the Post-Distribution Accounting.
What they may not do: decide whether the settlement is approved — only the court can, and “only after a hearing and only on finding that it is fair, reasonable, and adequate”; receive objections, since the notice instructs members who object to “send their written objections only to the court,” not to the administrator; answer for the court itself — official notices warn class members, “PLEASE DO NOT TELEPHONE THE COURT OR THE COURT CLERK'S OFFICE TO INQUIRE ABOUT THIS SETTLEMENT OR THE CLAIM PROCESS,” which is precisely why the administrator's own hotline and website exist; charge class members anything, since administration costs come out of the settlement fund or the defendant and are fixed by the court at final approval; or collect more personal data than the process requires — an opt-out letter, for instance, “should require only the information needed to opt out of the settlement and no extraneous information.”
Who is actually behind the envelope. There is no single company called "the settlement administrator" — it's a role dozens of firms compete to fill, and different firms run different cases. Every address below is either the company's own published headquarters, or, where only a mailing address is public, the P.O. box it actually uses for class-member mail:
- Kroll (Kroll Settlement Administration LLC) — New York, NY, headquartered at One World Trade Center. Kroll's data-breach mail is stamped “Return to Kroll, P.O. Box 980108, West Sacramento, CA 95798” — that is a monitoring offer, not a settlement. Details: Kroll Settlement Administration.
- Epiq (Epiq Class Action & Claims Solutions) — the class-action unit works out of Beaverton, OR and mails from Portland, OR P.O. boxes; Epiq also lists an office in Overland Park, KS. Details: Epiq Class Action Administration.
- JND Legal Administration — Seattle, WA, using P.O. Box 91352; no street address is published. Details: JND Legal Administration.
- Angeion Group — 1650 Arch Street, Suite 2210, Philadelphia, PA (second office in New York, NY). Details: Angeion Group Settlement Administration.
- Rust Consulting — Minneapolis, MN (as listed by a Better Business Bureau profile; Rust's own site blocks automated checks, so this address is not independently confirmed by us). Details: Rust Consulting Settlement Administration.
- Simpluris — mailing address P.O. Box 26170, Santa Ana, CA 92799; no street address is published. Details: Simpluris Settlement Administration.
- CPT Group — 50 Corporate Park, Irvine, CA. Details: CPT Group Settlement Administration.
- Atticus Administration — 1295 Northland Drive, St. Paul, MN. Details: Atticus Administration.
- A.B. Data — 600 A.B. Data Drive, Milwaukee, WI 53217. A.B. Data also runs its own data-breach notification service, separate from its class-action work. Details: A.B. Data Class Action Administration.
- Verita (formerly KCC — Kurtzman Carson Consultants — and Gilardi) — El Segundo, CA. Details: Verita (KCC) Settlement Administration.
- Analytics Consulting — 18675 Lake Drive East, Chanhassen, MN. Details: Analytics Consulting Settlement Administration.
- RG/2 Claims Administration — mailing address P.O. Box 59479, Philadelphia, PA; no street address is published. Details: RG/2 Claims Administration.
- Phoenix Settlement Administrators — Orange County, CA, mailing address in Orange, CA, with an office in Newport Beach, CA. Details: Phoenix Settlement Administrators.
- Cyberscout (a TransUnion company) — mails breach-notification letters from Dearborn, MI and Suwanee, GA. This is a breach mailer, not a settlement administrator: no case, no claim form, no money, only a monitoring offer. Details: Cyberscout Data Breach Letter.
- IDX (formerly ID Experts) — company address in Beaverton, OR; breach-notification mail is stamped “Return to IDX, P.O. Box 989728, West Sacramento, CA 95798-9728.” Also a breach mailer, not a settlement administrator. Details: IDX Data Breach Letter.
Why You Got Mail From a Company You Never Heard Of
1. A lawsuit against a company you did business with has settled, and a court ordered you notified. Administrators do not build their mailing lists from sign-ups — they work from the defendant's own records: customer lists, account data, employment records, insurance files, or lists the defendant already had to keep after a breach. Rule 23(c)(2)(B) is the reason your name is on that list at all: for the most common type of class settlement, the court must order “individual notice to all members who can be identified through reasonable effort.” If you ever had an account with, worked for, or received medical care or insurance from the company being sued, that alone can be enough to put your name on the notice list — no prior contact with the administrator required.
2. The company itself had a data breach and state law requires it to tell you directly. This is a separate process with no court and, usually, no lawsuit yet. It produces the letters people search for most: “Return to Kroll, P.O. Box 980108, West Sacramento, CA 95798” and “Return to IDX, P.O. Box 989728, West Sacramento, CA 95798-9728” are both breach-notification return addresses out of the same California ZIP code, from two unrelated companies — Kroll and IDX. Cyberscout, a TransUnion company, sends the equivalent letter from Dearborn, MI or Suwanee, GA. All three offer free identity or credit monitoring on the breached company's letterhead — there is no claim form, no case number to look up, and no money, because there is no settlement to distribute yet.
The practical rule: the return address on the envelope tells you which mail-handling company sent it; only the letterhead inside tells you which company had the breach or was sued — and neither one, by itself, tells you a settlement exists.
Verify a Notice in 5 Steps
1. Find the case name and number, and check it against the court named on the letter. A real class notice has to state, in plain language, the nature of the action, the class definition, and “the binding effect of a class judgment on members” under Rule 23(c)(3). A mailing with no case name, no class definition, and no court named is not a class notice — full stop.
2. Look the case up on the court's own docket (PACER) instead of trusting the letter. Northern District of California guidance requires notices to carry “Instructions on how to access the case docket via PACER or in person at any of the court's locations.” If you can't match the letter to a real docket entry, that's a red flag.
3. Type the official settlement website yourself — don't click the link in the message. A genuine settlement site is required to post “The address for a website, maintained by the claims administrator or class counsel, that lists key deadlines and has links to the notice, claim form (if any), preliminary approval order, motions for preliminary and final approval and for attorneys' fees.” If the site you land on doesn't have those court documents, it isn't the real one.
4. Call the number printed in the notice — not the court. Official notice language warns class members, “PLEASE DO NOT TELEPHONE THE COURT OR THE COURT CLERK'S OFFICE TO INQUIRE ABOUT THIS SETTLEMENT OR THE CLAIM PROCESS.” Questions about the case go to the administrator's hotline, printed on the notice and on the settlement website you typed in yourself — never a number supplied only in the message you're trying to verify.
5. If anyone asks for money, a fee, a gift card, crypto, your bank account, or your Social Security number to "release" a payment — stop. Nothing in Rule 23 or the court guidance for administering a settlement contemplates a payment from a class member. The FTC states the same principle for its own consumer-refund programs: “The FTC never requires you to pay upfront fees or asks you for sensitive information, like your Social Security number or bank account information. If someone claims to be from the FTC and asks for money, it's a scam.” The same logic applies to any legitimate settlement administrator.
How They Pay — and Why It Takes So Long
Why the money doesn't move immediately. None of the delay is the administrator sitting on your check. Four separate procedural requirements have to clear first. (1) Rule 23(e)(2) requires a hearing and an explicit court finding that the settlement is “fair, reasonable, and adequate” before a dollar goes out. (2) Class members must first get “at least thirty-five days to opt out or object to the settlement and the motion for attorney's fees and costs,” and that window has to close, and any objections be addressed, before final approval. (3) The administrator's own fee, class counsel's fees, and any service awards aren't fixed until that same final-approval hearing — “the court may not approve the amount of the cost award to the settlement administrator until the final approval hearing” — so the exact per-person payout can be unknown until then. (4) If the court denies approval, nothing gets paid at all: the notice language itself warns that in that event “no settlement payments will be sent out, and the lawsuit will continue.” Once checks go out and become stale, administrators still owe the court a final reckoning — “Within 21 days after the settlement checks become stale ... the parties should file a Post-Distribution Accounting (and post it on the settlement website)” reporting exactly how much was claimed, paid, and left over.
How a Settlement Actually Moves From Filing to Check
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1. Settlement Agreement and Preliminary Approval
The parties sign a deal, pick an administrator through what courts expect to be a competitive process — “The parties are expected to get multiple competing bids from potential settlement administrators” — and file a motion for preliminary approval. The court decides at this stage whether notice goes out at all: under Rule 23(e)(1)(B), notice is only justified once the parties show the court “will likely be able to” approve the settlement and certify the class.
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2. Notice — the Letter or Email You Received
Once preliminary approval is granted, the administrator mails or emails the notice and opens the settlement website and hotline named on it. The notice has to state the date of the final approval hearing and warn “that the date may change without further notice to the class,” pointing readers to the settlement website or PACER to check. Class members then get a fixed minimum window to act: “The parties should ensure that class members have at least thirty-five days to opt out or object to the settlement and the motion for attorney's fees and costs.”
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3. Claim Period
If the settlement requires a claim form — many don't, and pay everyone automatically instead — this is the window to file it. We could not confirm a typical length for this window from any primary source; the widely repeated "90 to 120 days" figure comes only from consumer-press summaries, not from a rule or court order, so we're not repeating it as fact. The honest answer is that it varies; the notice and the settlement website set the actual deadline for your specific case.
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4. Final Approval Hearing (Fairness Hearing)
The court can approve the settlement “only after a hearing and only on finding that it is fair, reasonable, and adequate,” weighing whether “the class representatives and class counsel have adequately represented the class,” whether the deal was “negotiated at arm's length,” and whether it “treats class members equitably relative to each other.” This is also when the court sets attorney's fees, service awards, and the administrator's own cost award, and the parties must report back “the number of undeliverable class notices and claim packets, the number of class members who submitted valid claims, the number of class members who opted out, and the number of class members who objected.”
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5. Distribution
Checks or electronic payments go out once the approval order is no longer appealable. We found no verified primary source stating a typical elapsed time for private class-action distributions — treat any specific number you read elsewhere for this step as unverified. The one authoritative timing figure available comes from a different program entirely: the FTC's stated goal for its own consumer-redress refunds is “to send payments within 6 months of receiving the data and money necessary for distribution” — that describes FTC redress programs, not a private class-action benchmark. For any actual case, the settlement's own website is the only reliable source for when checks go out.
Scam Warnings, in the Regulators' Own Words
Because settlement and refund mail is worth impersonating, federal regulators publish standing warnings. None of these three is specific to any one administrator named on this page — they describe the pattern scammers use against anyone expecting a class-action or refund payment.
"That's a Scam" — the FTC on Fake Refund Contacts
The Federal Trade Commission's own warning: “Scammers are impersonating the FTC. The FTC will never threaten you, say you must transfer money to ‘get a refund,’ or promise you a prize. That's a scam.” The same test works against a fake settlement contact: real administrators don't threaten you, and they don't ask you to pay anything to receive money you're already owed.
No Legitimate Refund Ever Requires an Upfront Fee
Also from the FTC, describing its own consumer-redress programs: “The FTC never requires you to pay upfront fees or asks you for sensitive information, like your Social Security number or bank account information. If someone claims to be from the FTC and asks for money, it's a scam.” And: “Never pay money or give sensitive financial information to get a refund payment from the FTC.” No settlement administrator operating under court rules is permitted to charge class members either — administration costs come out of the settlement fund, not your pocket.
Pressure and Payment-First Tactics (U.S. Postal Inspection Service)
The USPIS, which investigates mail fraud, publishes the same basic tells: “Don't give your financial information—Social Security number, credit card, or bank account numbers—to anyone you don't know and don't trust.” “Any offer that requires a payment first ... is probably a scam.” And: “Get all information in writing before you agree to enter a contest, make a purchase, or give a donation. Don't be pressured into making an immediate decision.” A real settlement notice never has a countdown clock demanding you wire money to unlock a payment.
Settlement Administrator FAQ
Is this company real?
Kroll, Epiq, JND Legal Administration, Angeion Group, Rust Consulting, Simpluris, CPT Group, Atticus Administration, A.B. Data, Verita (formerly KCC and Gilardi), Analytics Consulting, RG/2 Claims Administration, and Phoenix Settlement Administrators are all real companies that administer class-action settlements under court supervision; Cyberscout and IDX are real companies too, but they send data-breach notification mail, not settlement mail. A real name on the envelope tells you the company exists — it does not by itself tell you this particular letter is legitimate, since scammers borrow real names constantly. Run the letter through the 5 steps above before you trust it.
Why me? I never signed up for anything.
Because notice doesn't work by sign-up — it works by record. If you had an account, a job, insurance, medical care, or a purchase with the company being sued (or breached), Rule 23(c)(2)(B) requires the court to order “individual notice to all members who can be identified through reasonable effort,” and the administrator pulls your name and address straight from that company's own files.
What's the difference between a monitoring letter and a settlement notice?
A monitoring letter — the kind Cyberscout, IDX, and Kroll's breach-notification mail send — comes on the breached company's letterhead, offers free credit or identity monitoring, includes a membership number, and carries an activation deadline. It has no case number, no settlement website, and nothing to claim. A settlement notice names an actual court case, points to a case-specific settlement website, and usually includes a Class Member ID or Claim ID. The two can arrive years apart from the same underlying incident: the breach notice first, and — only if a lawsuit is later filed and settles — a settlement notice much later.
How do they pay?
By whatever methods that specific settlement's notice and official website specify — commonly a mailed check, sometimes direct deposit or another electronic option. There is no single payment method that applies to every administrator or every case. The FTC states that its own, separate consumer-redress program currently pays “by check, prepaid debit card, PayPal, and Zelle” — a useful reference point, but a description of the FTC's program, not a promise about any private class-action settlement.
Is there one phone number for settlement administrators?
No — there is no single company called "the settlement administrator" and no single phone line. Every case has its own hotline, printed on its own notice and posted on its own settlement website. Official notice language even tells you where not to call: “PLEASE DO NOT TELEPHONE THE COURT OR THE COURT CLERK'S OFFICE TO INQUIRE ABOUT THIS SETTLEMENT OR THE CLAIM PROCESS.” Use the number from the case website you verified yourself, never one supplied only in an unsolicited message.
How do I check my claim status?
Go to the official settlement website named in your notice — typed into your browser yourself, not clicked from the message — and look for a claim-status lookup using the Class Member ID or Claim ID printed on your notice. That website is required to link to the underlying case documents (the notice, claim form, preliminary and final approval orders); if the site you find doesn't have those, you may be on the wrong site or a lookalike.
I got an unexpected check — should I cash it?
Verify it first. Match the case name printed on the check or its cover letter to a real case using the docket-lookup and website steps above, then call the hotline on the official settlement website — not a number printed only on the check — to confirm the payment is real before you deposit it. That costs a phone call and a few minutes; it costs nothing to do.
Which company is behind the envelope?
Match the return address on your envelope against the list above. Two patterns catch the most searches: “Return to Kroll, P.O. Box 980108, West Sacramento, CA 95798” and “Return to IDX, P.O. Box 989728, West Sacramento, CA 95798-9728” are both breach-notification return addresses out of the same California ZIP code, from two unrelated companies — Kroll and IDX. Neither is a settlement payment; both are free-monitoring offers. If your envelope instead names a court case, a Class Member ID, or a settlement website, look up the sender among the 13 settlement administrators listed above — Kroll, Epiq, JND, Angeion, Rust Consulting, Simpluris, CPT Group, Atticus, A.B. Data, Verita, Analytics Consulting, RG/2 Claims, and Phoenix — each with its own dedicated page showing verified addresses and exactly what it can and cannot do.
Separate from this case: were you injured in the last 2 years?
Class-action payouts are fixed amounts through an administrator. A personal injury claim is a different case — and often worth far more. Free estimate, no obligation.
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