On Wednesday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro filed a civil complaint for injunctive relief and civil penalties against five lead generating services which sell consumer information to third party businesses and organizations. According to the complaint, the services have violated the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, state consumer protection laws, as well the state’s and the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rules.
The defendants are Fluent LLC, American Prize Center LLC, Deliver Technology LLC, RewardZone USA LLC, and Samples & Savings USA LLC.
The Western District of Pennsylvania filing explains that the defendants’ businesses operate by collecting personal information, including telephone numbers, from consumers and then selling that information to third parties, or “marketing partners” who want to use the leads to generate business. Many marketing partners advertise and sell subscriptions and other services, insurance, utility services, and on-line education programs, the complaint says.
The defendants operate websites which entice consumers to visit them by offering promotions such as gift cards to popular retailers and digital payments via online and through social media channels. When a consumer visits a website, they are prompted to enter their personal information and answer survey questions. From 2018 through 2021, more than 4.2 million Pennsylvania consumers registered their personal contact information on the d efendants’ websites, the filing says.
The attorney general faults the defendants for failing to “clearly and conspicuously disclose” that if a consumer selects a certain answer to a survey question, they are in turn consenting to be contacted for purposes of telemarketing by one of the marketing partners. By way of example, the complaint reprints what it claims is a screenshot of a survey question asking whether you or a family member have a history of cancer, and listing more than half dozen types of cancer as potential responses.
The complaint also argues that the defendants’ websites insinuate that personal information entered will be used to contact the consumer about the promised promotion, when in fact they are entering their contact information for purposes of lead generation and alleged consent to be contacted by phone.
“Defendants’ lack of transparency and deceptive marketing practices have denied consumers the opportunity to make informed decisions about sharing their personal contact information for purposes of telemarketing,” the filing says. It claims that as a result, millions of telemarketing calls were placed to Pennsylvania consumers by or on behalf of defendants’ marketing partners.
The complaint seeks statutory penalties of up to $1,000 per violation and up to $3,000 for each violation involving a victim age 60 or older, as provided by some causes of action.
