New York Paralegal Blog

The manufacturer of Rascal Scooters, used by disabled and senior consumers with limited mobility, will pay $100,000 to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it illegally called millions of consumers who had chosen to avoid unwanted telemarketing calls by listing their phone numbers on the national Do Not Call Registry. The FTC alleges the firm illegally used phone numbers gathered from sweepstakes entry forms to contact consumers whose numbers are on the Registry. The FTC’s complaint charges scooter manufacturer Electric Mobility Corporation and its owner Michael Flowers with making more than three million illegal sales calls since 2003 to consumers on the Do Not Call Registry who had entered the company’s “Win a Free Rascal” sweepstakes. According to the FTC, in small print under the part of the sweepstakes form provided for the entrant’s phone number, EMC reminded consumers to list their numbers so the company could contact them if they were “the next lucky winner.” EMC en...

Court Order Imposes Five-Year Ban on Telemarketing to Consumers A financial services telemarketer who allegedly violated several requirements of the Federal Trade Commission’s Do Not Call Rule – from calling hundreds of thousands of consumers on the National Do Not Call Registry to failing to transmit accurate caller ID information – has settled the government’s charges and is banned from telemarketing to consumers for five years. In November 2007, as part of a multi-case crackdown on Do Not Call violators, the government charged Global Mortgage Funding, Inc. (Global Mortgage) and its owner, Damian Robert Kutzner, with unlawfully calling consumers on the Do Not Call Registry in an attempt to sell financial products, including mortgages and related financing services. The complaint also charged the defendants with violating the FTC’s Do Not Call Rule by failing to transmit accurate caller ID information, failing to pay fees required to access the Registry, and abandoning calls by not c...