Defendants Are Ordered to Pay $28.7M in Penalties for Making 40M Illegal Calls

U.S. District Judge Lindsay Jenkins for Northern Illinois in Chicago ordered Day Pacer and EduTrek and their owners, Raymond Fitzgerald and Ian Fitzgerald, plus the estate of deceased defendant David Cumming, to pay $28.7 million in civil penalties for making millions of illegal, unsolicited calls to consumers whose numbers were listed on the national do not call registry, said the judge’s Jan. 23 signed order (docket 1:19-cv-01984). The judge also permanently banned the defendants from participating in telemarketing or helping others engaged in telemarketing to consumers, it said. Defendant Cumming died after the parties had fully briefed summary judgment and his estate has been substituted as a defendant, said the order. The FTC alleged that the defendants bought consumers’ contact information mainly from websites claiming to help people find jobs, and instead illegally called those consumers to market unsolicited vocational or post-secondary education services, said the commission Wednesday. The court found that the defendants assisted other telemarketing companies by paying them to make about 40 million calls to consumers on the DNC registry, it said. The court also found that the individual defendants knowingly violated the commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule, citing evidence that they had ignored repeated complaints from consumers and warnings from business partners.