Another Joke Fine Shows US Authorities Do Not Take Illegal Telemarketing Serious
commsrisk.com
commsrisk.com
Honest question: why can’t the victims sue the company for harassment? (or rather a lawyer start a class action). I’m sure a jury trial would award very large damages, or is this protected by free speech in the US?
For example, when my phone receives a call from my own phone number am I going to sue myself? There is no way to track down the actual caller in most cases.
You have to sound like a potential buyer (sucker) in order for them to properly identify themselves.
This is true for Auto Warranty, Medicare, Timeshares, etc. robocallers.
The most successful persona unfortunately is that of a slightly senile senior citizen. Senile enough that you seem gullible to the caller, but believable that you have enough money and sense to continue with the transaction.
Unfortunately - when they're calling, they also seem to have all your personal info, and know your name and how old you are. So I put on my best senile guy voice, they confirm my name, and then they hang up.
It's actually quite concerning!
So while sometimes the information is legitimate - especially if you’re not opted out of the major internet people search engines (ref optery which is a yc graduate company) - but you can also “poison the well” enough to get your fake persona disseminated.
I'm not a lawyer, but even though the foreign scam call company illegally called you, I don't believe the US based company is liable for anything because the scammers make you agree to be transferred to a Medicare licensing office.
So there isn't even a phone number to trace.
They almost certainly don't have ALL the information, but they'll know which carrier sent them the call, who can then look into it... and on back to the source carrier.
The last suit I filed against a telemarketer was against the “beneficiary” company as the lead generator who called me was of course overseas. They claimed that they could not be held vicariously liable for the calls but ultimately settled with me because litigating that would cost a lot more money than the settlement amount.
Some state statutes go further than the tcpa and address vicarious liability specifically, so if you’re in one of those states you have a stronger legal leg to stand on.
It was worth it to me at the time but the biggest issue is you don’t have control over when the calls come in- so you have to spend some time up front social engineering these people to get the information you need during inconvenient times of the day.
Basically once you’ve identified the caller or the business that benefits from the call, you write a demand letter that states the details of the calls and you intend to sue under the tcpa if they do not wish to settle for $$$ before a given date.
You’ll want to read the text of the tcpa first - basically you can be awarded up to $500 per call and ask the court for triple damages so you can allege damages for up to $1500 per call. Also research any state laws you may have (that have a “private right of action” aka you can bring the suit yourself). Those damages can be layered on top.
I’ve found that many people are fascinated by the stories but nobody that I know of has gone on to actually take these people to court themselves.
The first few times they call, I'll ask to be placed on the do not call list (and record that fact in my notes as well). Of course, they'll continue to call... so then it's on to social engineer the name of the company or beneficiary company (if a lead generator is calling you rather than the company itself).
Once I've figured out the name of the company, then I have to basically do the whole thing in reverse: I find a "legitimate" number for the company (off the website, whatever) and get a customer service associate to read off my fake customer information back to me.
It's important to keep receipts. The attorneys for these companies don't give up easily. They'll come up with all sorts of excuses - we don't make outgoing calls, its not us (OK then how did I get your company name?); how do you know it's XYZ company? (because Bob gave me the name when I received the call); how do you know that someone didn't falsely give our company name to defame us? (because I called the number for XYZ and Dave was able to look up my "customer" record)
Once you show that you have receipts and you're serious, they generally fold very quickly.
1) set up a service that answers calls to your number
2) service tracks the calls and categorizes them for you
3) service uses AI to make calls and collect info
4) service files lawsuit in your name
5) company settles, customer takes 70% of settlement, service takes 30%.
not authoritative, but general trend is ~ 40 plaintiff are acceptable minimum cohort for a class, but that can be even smaller, a class of 1 is feasible but very uncommon.
also tradesies on office furniture.
The lawyers can take some office chairs as well.
And they don’t even really lose anyway, it’s just a cost of doing business. Just spin up another company and get back to the call sheet.
We have hucksters abusing legitimate business structures. I think we need an “in good faith” escape clause for LLCs that captures folks that abuse them.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-01-31/matt-l...
a guy selling cigarettes on the streets of NYC without a permit would have been choked to death in seconds. (actual thing that happened)
seems like this justice imbalance in the USA is something we can get bipartisan support for changing. lets do it yall.
I don’t know, but that is a question for behavior. I do believe in rehabilitation being the underlying goal of prison, so I’d be thrilled if they came out of it changed people.
> a guy selling cigarettes on the streets of NYC without a permit would have been choked to death in seconds. (actual thing that happened)
And that is awful. Never said I was defending that.
> seems like this justice imbalance in the USA is something we can get bipartisan support for changing. lets do it yall.
If only.
It really does seem the harshest punishments are handed out for hurting people/companies more powerful than you. The rich and powerful, including corporations, should be held more accountable. Instead, the law seems to get used mostly to keep people in their place.
I still remember how HSBC got fined millions for laundering billions for Mexican drug cartels. Normal people would be doing hard time if they did that. Banks get fined less than the size of the crime.
Contrast that with the tone taken by our most powerful, about the scourge of illegal immigrants bring the very same chemicals into the country by swimming the Rio Grande. I would not be surprised to hear support for summary executions of every third person in Laredo, TX.
If you are speeding and get hit with a $X speeding ticket, this does not suggest that the local authorities believe the threat to public safety you were caught making is somehow worth $X in damages. It means the local authorities believe an $X fine is sufficient to deter you from doing this again, and that the prospect of an $X fine is sufficient to deter others from doing this in the first place.
Now, if you actually cause injury or damage, we are in a whole different ball park and you may be sued for a heck of lot more than $X. The value of damages should be expected to far exceed the value of a fine.
So getting back to the quote from the article, I don't think it makes sense to put the fine amount on one side of the scales and the damage caused on the other. That's not what fines are for. The fine money won't even go to the injured party anyway.
Some spamming campaigns do not expect revenue (e.g. recent convictions for a targeted voter misinformation robocall campaign whose desired outcome was to discourage the targets from voting). Tying fines to revenue won't affect the $0-revenue campaigns
The initial call was clearly someone outside the US. The 2nd level was someone with better English skills, but the real scammers at the 3rd level spoke perfect English and were likely inside the US.
And, the initial call to me was from a spoofed number, likely from an owned PBX.
It's a LOT of work to track down these companies. There was a particular scam related to CC rates and I was able to find a lawyer in TX that had successfully prosecuted the company that did the scam. I called him and he picked up after 1 ring. We had a nice conversation, but his advice was: do not mess with these people (by wasting their time intentionally). They are not nice people and after he helped shut them down, they just popped up somewhere else.
Over here in the EU I can start off with asking who is the data controller, but results are still mixed - from hanging up, through trying to weasel out of a response to finally telling me who is mismanaging my data like this[0].
I think I'm still getting labeled as "asking too many questions", because it's subsidised.
Also, robocalls still happen occasionally - can't do anything about that.
[0] A guy producing shell company after shell company - twelve such entities since mid 2020.
fines should be of magnitude that discourages the behaviour, but should not be so large as to be an instant kill for what could be a legal business if not for the behaviour. there should be a negative reinforcement that provides a window of opportunity to learn and adapt, or else fold up.
I also really don't see the economic harm in killing robocall companies. It seems like a net win to me.
The bigger problem, is that many of these companies are structured in a way that profits get extracted to the owners while liabilities don't. So even if you fine these companies out of existence, you don't necessarily make the practice unprofitable.
This is why we need these fines to also pierce liability limiting corporate structures and why we need laws to allow us to put the people profiting from these illegal acts in jail.
The problem is, if a company made 500M from their bad behaviour, and the govt only charged them 300M. The company is not incentivized to not do this behaviour anymore. They made 200M net after the fine!
If they made 500M and the fine is 550M, then they are incentivized. It hurt them 50M to do the bad behaviour.
It's obviously not as simple as I'm making it, because just calculating the money they made from the bad behaviour could be very complicated. but you get the idea.
Why not? A corporate death penalty should absolutely be a thing. If we can have it for people, then we can have it for a business. The problem is that government sucks at doing its own job and the usual punishments are a joke.
You should be ashamed of this kind of call for violence, even if you intended it as a joke.
We made a Drone to Toilet Paper houses!
Break the law to get $100, it's a crime, break the law to get a million, it's a write-off.
There was no trial, there was no conviction, and the telemarketers admit to no wrongdoing.
They also agree to pay the full $13m if they fail to comply with a whole host of reporting and reform, including stopping their part of the calls.
>Why can't we just start putting the CEOs of robocall companies that break the law in jail?
I take it as a given because it was given in the premise.
Anyway, I read the settlement proposal. There was no trial because the company waived their right to it. Because they know they're getting a slap on the wrist compared to the potential fines they could face. They're getting told they got away with all the illegal acts they previously committed (and yes, some of those things are definitely illegal), as long as they stop it now.
Imagine if someone steals hundreds of TVs, gpus, and laptops, then when they finally get caught, the courts say "Naughty naughty. We're fining you 100 dollars, but you can keep everything you stole. Now don't do it again or we'll actually punish you". It's absurd.
(Answer: the military doesn't serve the public.)
I hate robo-callers and scammers as much as anyone, but I don't think drone-striking them is the proper response.
Here is the full title:
"Another Joke Fine Shows US Authorities Do Not Take Illegal Telemarketing Calls Seriously"
i had to shed 9 characters
First it says one of the five companies given in the press release, so does that mean that 4 out of the 5 are actually going to be paying exactly what the FTC said in their press release? Where do the fines for the other 4 relate to what they claimed for this one? As in if the other fines are still higher than the claimed for this one, it still seems like a success and not "Do Not Take Illegal Telemarketing Serious".
Why exactly is there such a discrepancy? I don't see any explanation for why this is the case.
I don’t quite get the motivation either but it beggars belief they got into the weeds on this fine and don’t know the other happened, given they’re right next to eachother in press releases and documentation
Also, this settlement did not include Vision Solar, the actual beneficiary of the marketing. My guess would be that most of the profits went to Vision Solar, and so the result will be proportionately larger.