FTC Wins Huge $7.5 Million Penalty Against "Do Not Call" List Violator 136
coondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today said it has won a $7.5 million civil penalty – the largest ever — against Mortgage Investors Corporation, one of the nation's biggest refinancers of veterans' home loans for allegedly violating 'Do Not Call' requirements. According to the FTC’s complaint, Mortgage Investors Corporation called consumers on the Federal Trade Commission’s National Do Not Call Registry, failed to remove consumers from its company call list upon demand, and misstated the terms of available loan products during telemarketing calls."
Re:Huge penalty? (Score:4, Interesting)
For instance, the largest casino in the United States (Foxwoods) ended up with a serious credit problem several years ago. The presiding CEO (Michael Speller) was forced to resign, giving up his golden parachute, and then they brought back in a former CEO (Bill Sherlock) that had left on very good terms (the employees loved him, and the casino grew to be the biggest in the country under his watch) to serve as a temporary intrim until they landed the current CEO (Scott Butera) who is a specialist in digging corporations out of credit problems (his previous position was saving the Tropicana in Atlantic City from its own credit problems.)
Note also that Scott Butera is also renowned as a union-friendly CEO, whereas Speller the CEO they forced out had brought moral down so low that the employees unionized under the mismanagement. So the owners saw the problem and picked up the perfect guy for the situation that they found themselves in, a new CEO that fairly quickly made peace with the union and then fairly quickly got the approximately $2 billion in debt restructured so that the casino could at least make the interest payments rather than continue to default on the loans.
Today the casino has breathing room again, seeking to establish a new property in Massachusetts.
Unwanted phone calls (Score:4, Interesting)
This way anybody who makes annoying phone calls would be blacklisted. This would include politicians, survey companies, charities, sales people, even annoying girlfriends. I would trust that anyone who annoys even a small handful of people is someone I don't want phoning me. Charities, politicians, and whatnot would be all indignant about this but if they regularly got *55'd then maybe they should rethink their position in this world.
The key here is no exceptions. I don't want some group self righteously explaining why they should be able to annoy me. Basically I don't want to ever receive a phone call from someone who I don't personally know.
Re:I guess it was worth it then... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that the scumbuckets doing the calls have a lot of ways to easily thumb their nose at the FCC:
1: They use shell companies incorporated offshore. The FCC gets a big verdict, the company goes under, but the next day, another company is doing the same exact thing. All their equipment and workers are held and employed by secondary holding corporations (the details are all kept offshore), so the only thing lost might be a name.
2: With VoIP, it is trivial to forge numbers on Caller ID and run the shop from offshore.
3: There are so many DNC loopholes. Business "A" can rent out their mailing list, so business "B" can robocall at will, saying that due to the mailing list, they have a business relationship with the victim^Wcallee.
It is a very lucrative business because there is no real way for someone to block it and still have a usable phone. On landlines, there is no way to shut it off, as call blocking doesn't work on 800/888/866 numbers. iOS, one can use DND mode and only allow contacts (but it doesn't stop them from filling the voicemail up.) Android has Mr. Number which is a decent app, and uses a database of spammers/robocallers to deny calls with a busy signal.