Dish Agrees to Settle ACP Fraud Case for $17 Million
DOJ said 84,000 subscribers were ineligible for subsidies. The company didn’t admit any wrongdoing.
WASHINGTON, May 6, 2026 – Dish agreed to pay more than $17 million to settle an investigation into whether it defrauded Federal Communications Commission programs for low-income broadband subscribers.
The Justice Department said in a release Wednesday that Dish enrolled more than 84,000 ineligible subscribers in the now-defunct Affordable Connectivity program and its predecessor and continued seeking payments after learning they weren’t eligible.
“DISH continued seeking FCC program funds for months after its executives learned about its agents’ enrollment fraud and after an FCC [Office of Inspector General] advisory warning. FCC OIG is committed to holding accountable bad actors who misuse taxpayers funds,” FCC inspector general Fara Damelin said in a statement.
In total, Dish enrolled 130,000 subscribers that were eligible based on their children’s attendance at high-poverty schools in which all students received free lunches. Of those, the Justice Department alleged, 16,000 were more than 25 miles from the nearest school, 66,000 did not identify a school-aged student, and 2,400 used duplicate beneficiaries.
The DOJ said in its release that Dish employees in Texas, Florida, New York, and West Virginia trained third-party sales representatives to submit false information to the FCC’s identity verification system.
According to the settlement agreement, Dish obtained more than $14 million in funds the government considered potentially fraudulent. The subsidy claims at issue were made from May 12, 2021 through Feb. 28 , 2022.
Dish denied any wrongdoing and didn’t admit to anything as part of the settlement agreement.
“Our wireless brands administered the legacy EBB program in good faith, relying upon government systems – including the National Verifier – for eligibility determinations,” a spokesperson for EchoStar, which owns Dish, said in a statement. “Throughout the program’s duration, we cooperated with government inquiries and proactively instituted process improvements to address gaps and potential abuse by third-party retailers.”
The spokesperson added: “While we deny any wrongdoing and do not admit fault, we have agreed to this settlement in the interest of moving forward and putting this legacy matter behind us. Our focus remains on delivering great wireless service to our customers.”
Dish had been fighting determinations by the FCC’s subsidy administrator that some of its subscribers were ineligible. The company argued among other things that its use of the federal identity verification system was proper and not in bad faith.
The company will drop those petitions as part of the settlement.
