Mamdani’s consumer watchdog takes on ‘epidemic of corporate lawbreaking’

Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, left, and Sam Levine, commissioner of the New York City department of consumer and worker protection, during an announcement on junk fees in New York on 21 January 2026. Photograph: Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenZohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, left, and Sam Levine, commissioner of the New York City department of consumer and worker protection, during an announcement on junk fees in New York on 21 January 2026. Photograph: Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesConsumedZohran MamdaniMamdani’s consumer watchdog takes on ‘epidemic of corporate lawbreaking’New York City’s new commissioner of consumer and worker protection is launching an “aggressive” campaign to fight junk fees and deceptive practices

New York mayor Zohran Mamdani’s top consumer watchdog has one gripe about New Yorkers – he would like them to complain more. “We get about 30,000 complaints a year,” said Samuel AA Levine, New York City’s new commissioner of consumer and worker protection. “I’d really like to get the number up.”

From downtown Manhattan, he has renewed a war on junk fees and deceptive subscriptions that he started in Washington DC as the Federal Trade Commission’s consumer protection director during the Biden presidency, banned hotels’ hidden charges, and cracked down on delivery companies’ “design tricks” that lower wages and predatory debt collection. Since January, his office has sued self-storage companies and won millions from Uber Eats and Amazon.

June could see a new “click to cancel” rule that would make New York the first municipality in the US with a law on subscriptions that are maddeningly difficult to get out of.

The United States has suffered a decades-long “epidemic of corporate lawbreaking with very few repercussions”, Levine told the Guardian in a recent interview from his office, decorated with a caustic New York Post editorial that features Levine and Mamdani eating Munchkins as they announce an $1.8m settlement with a Dunkin’ Donuts franchisee over worker violations.

Critics, and corporate law firms, are raising alarms about New York’s new “aggressive enforcement posture”, warning that Levine is a local analogue to a state attorney general or the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

“Corporations that rip people off need to face consequences. I don’t think that’s radical. I think it’s common sense,” said Levine.

In the broadest sense, why do you think American consumers are so unhappy right now?

I think certain companies have too much power. I think small businesses have too little power.

But you’ve had such lax merger enforcement over the last four decades since the Reagan administration. You look at most industries today, there are three, maybe four players.

And any policy you want to get done in Washington, those players effectively have a veto over.

Consumers describe feeling increasingly under attack by companies that are not acting in good faith. Wall Street and other pressures have long pushed executives to squeeze as much money as they can out of customers. What specifically do you think has changed recently?