As Nina Shapiro reported last year, the Bellevue-based company Intelius made millions by allegedly duping people into signing up for unwanted monthly subscriptions to it and other websites. “Simply put, Intelius chose cash over candor,” McKenna said this afternoon at a press conference announcing a $1.3 million settlement between his office and the company.Intelius offered people the chance to look up an unlisted phone number or other personal information for a small fee. Then through a series of ambiguous instructions, Intelius also signed them up for monthly subscriptions for other products like an online identity theft protection service, according to the AG’s office. Customers didn’t realize it until they checked a credit card statement.An AG staffer bolstered McKenna’s claim that Intelius was deceiving its customers with a series of screen shots showing what would happen if you tried to find out who was behind, for instance, an unlisted phone number that keeps showing up on your caller ID.First you sign up for an account with Intelius, then agree to purchase a report on the phone number for $4.95, the first shot showed.After entering your billing information, you click a button saying “Confirm the Purchase and Show My Report.” But rather than taking you to the phone number, another screen pops up offering you a $10 refund if you complete a two-question survey. If you read the fine print next to the survey, you’ll discover that in completing the survey and clicking on a button saying “YES And show my report” you are actually signing up for a service costing $19.95 per month that allows you to locate sex offenders in your neighborhood. (Something you can do for free.) A much smaller button saying “No, show my report” is what you should be selecting.But most customers didn’t read the fine print and the button with the all-caps “YES” implies to people that you have to click it to find out the owner of that phone number, McKenna explains. As part of the settlement, Intellius does not admit to doing anything wrong, but the company will have to make any post-transaction offers more clear to consumers. Another local company, Classmates.com, now requires customers to re-enter their billing information for any additional purchases after being accused of using similar deceptive practices.The $1.3 million will be used to give people who feel they were duped by Intelius a refund. Though with at least 19,000 Washingtonians having been taken in by only one of the company’s post-transaction marketing ploys, don’t expect to get a fat payout. McKenna says the settlement does not protect Intelius from further lawsuits by disgruntled customers. And in the future, he warns, question any deals where you can get a $10 refund for a $4.95 purchase.