As part of what we hope will become a new tradition here at Yahoo Finance, we’re taking a look back at the year’s worst personal finance offenders: companies that cost customers millions of dollars and untold hours of grief through a host of nefarious practices.

To come up with the top 7 offenders, we sifted through dozens of actions taken by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau against bad financial practices in 2015. In the last year, the watchdog agency recovered more than $200 million in penalties from companies it found had violated financial protection laws, and paid out to nearly 900,000 consumers.

For-profit college chain Corinthian Colleges Inc. was ordered to forgive $480 million worth of private loans borrowed by students

View photos In this July 8, 2014 file photo, a woman walks past the Everest Institute in Silver Spring, Md. Corinthian Colleges owns Everest, Heald College and WyoTech schools. More

In February, the CFPB, working with the Department of Education, announced the now-defunct chain of for-profit colleges would forgive $480 million worth of private student loans. Regulators accused Corinthian, which owned dozens of schools opearting under the names Everest Institute, WyoTech and Heald College, of misleading students with over-inflated graduation and job placement rates. More than 60% of Corinthian borrowers wound up defaulting on their loans within three years, according to the CFPB — six times the rate for federal student loan borrowers. Interest rates for these loans were also twice as high as those rates on federal loans.

The loan forgiveness was a huge win for Corinthian borrowers, many of whom were left in the lurch when the company was ordered to close down a large portion of its campuses in 2014 and 2015. Most recently, in October, a federal court ruled in favor of the CFPB in a 2014 lawsuit against Corinthian, agreeing that Corinthian was liable for more than $530 million in loans taken out by students.

Verizon and Sprint will pay $120 million for allowing third party merchants to hit their customers with unauthorized charges

View photos sprint and t-mobile More

In May, the CFPB found Verizon (VZ) and Sprint’s (S) flawed billing systems had allowed third-party merchants to hit customers with millions of dollars worth of unauthorized charges. The practice, known as “cramming,” went on for nearly a decade from 2003 to 2014. Some customers were charged one-time fees ranging from 99 cents to $14.99, while others were stuck with monthly recurring charges of $9.99 for so-called “premium texting” services (like horoscope and sports score updates). The worst part? Sprint and Verizon were profiting handsomely from the practice, pocketing 30%-40% of the gross revenue from these charges, according to the CFPB, all while failing to keep track of customers who had submitted complaints. They aren’t the first mobile providers to get caught cramming — AT&T and T-Mobile have settled similar lawsuits as well.

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