Tag: Do Not Call

According to a 2016 complaint brought jointly with the Florida Attorney General’s Office, the Life Management defendants bombarded consumers with illegal robocalls in attempts to sell them bogus credit card interest rate reduction services. According to the complaint, the defendants guaranteed that they could substantially and permanently lower consumers’ credit card interest rates and save them thousands of dollars in interest payments. Consumers allegedly made up-front payments but rarely, if ever, got the promised services. In December 2018, a federal judge in Florida permanently banned Kevin W. Guice from the telemarketing and debt-relief industries, agreeing with the FTC and State that he founded and operated the  scam that took in over $23 million from more than 10,000 consumers, until halted by a June 2016. In July 2023, the FTC returned more than $540,000 to defrauded consumers.

In February 2023, the FTC sued to stop an interconnected web of operations responsible for delivering tens of millions of unwanted VoIP and ringless voicemail phony debt service robocalls to consumers nationwide. DOJ filed the complaint in federal court on the FTC’s behalf. The DOJ also filed a proposed consent order against one of the companies and individuals involved in the operation, which would, if approved by the court, bar them from making further misrepresentations about debt relief services and ordering them to comply with the TSR.

The FTC sued VoIP service provider VoIP Terminator, Inc., a related company, and the firms’ owner for assisting and facilitating the transmission of millions of illegal prerecorded telemarketing robocalls, including those they knew or should have known were scams, to consumers nationwide. Many of the calls originated overseas, and related to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the defendants allegedly failing to act as a gatekeeper to stop them from entering the country. The proposed consent order bars the defendants from the allegedly illegal conduct.

The FTC’s October 2018 complaint against Redwood Scientific charged the defendants with a scheme that used illegal robocalls to deceptively market dissolvable oral film strips as effective smoking cessation, weight-loss, and sexual-performance aids. Announced in June 2019 as part of a crackdown on illegal robocalls against operations around the country responsible for more than one billion calls, an initial  settlement resolved the FTC’s charges against one defendant in the Redwood Scientific case, Danielle Cadiz. The order permanently banned Cadiz from all robocall activities, including ringless voicemails, and imposes a judgment of $18.2 million against Cadiz. In March 2022, the FTC announced the final court orders against all remaining defendants.

In February 2022, at the request of the Federal Trade Commission, federal courts in California ordered two Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers, Xcast and Deltracon, to turn over information that the agency is seeking as part of ongoing investigations into potentially illegal robocalls. Companies that fail to comply with such federal court orders can be held in contempt.

In February 2022, at the request of the Federal Trade Commission, federal courts in California ordered two Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers, Xcast and Deltracon, to turn over information that the agency is seeking as part of ongoing investigations into potentially illegal robocalls. Companies that fail to comply with such federal court orders can be held in contempt.