Illinois Court Fines Telemarketing Company $28M for Unsolicited Calls *Centurion Insurance AFS*

A federal district court has entered final orders against a telemarketing company and its owners, who made millions of illegal, unsolicited calls to people that were registered on the Do Not Call Registry. The Northern District Court of Illinois ordered the defendants to pay $28.7 million in civil penalties and permanently banned the defendants from participating in telemarketing or assisting and facilitating others engaged in telemarketing to consumers.

In September 2023, the court granted summary judgment in favor of the FTC, finding that the corporate defendants, Day Pacer, LLC and EduTrek, LLC, bought consumers’ contact information primarily from websites claiming to help people find jobs, and instead illegally called those consumers to market unsolicited vocational or post-secondary education services. The court also found that the defendants assisted and facilitated other telemarketing companies by paying them to make approximately 40 million calls to consumers on the Do Not Call Registry.

Finally, the court found that the individual defendants, Raymond Fitzgerald, Ian Fitzgerald, and David Cumming, knowingly violated the Telemarketing Sales Rule, citing evidence that they had ignored repeated complaints from consumers and warnings from business partners. As a result, the court entered the ban and held the defendants jointly liable for the $28.7 million judgment.

Source: FTC

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Illinois