Government Technology

Attorney General Sends a Message to Cell Phones Spammers: U R Violating the Law


You May Also Like

January 24, 2007 By

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has filed a lawsuit in Federal court against C & C Global Enterprises, L.L.C., operated by Neela Pundit and Charles Rossop, alleging that they sent millions of unsolicited text messages to Illinois consumers and wireless phones across the country in violation of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the state Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act.

Beginning on about November 3, 2006, Illinois residents began receiving unsolicited text messages alerting them that, "We have someone interested in buying or renting your Time Share" and directing the recipient to logon to www.webuyresorts.com or www.resortsellers.com for more information. The Web sites vanished from the Internet a few days after consumers began complaining about the unsolicited messages.

Madigan's Consumer Protection Division has received 66 written complaints and 190 complaints by phone from consumers complaining that they received these unsolicited text messages from the defendants.

Blanketing cell phone customers with unsolicited text messages costs consumers. Depending on a consumer's cell phone plan, the consumer either is charged a fee for each message received or her monthly bucket of text messages, for which she pays a monthly fee, is reduced. In addition, receiving and viewing text messages uses precious battery power which could leave consumers unable to make necessary calls, including emergency calls.

"The defendants have attempted to illegally shift their advertising costs to consumers by making the consumers pay to receive ads. This conduct is particularly egregious because consumers have no way to avoid these costs that they never agreed to incur and, in this case, many of the consumers who complained to my office said they do not even own a time share to sell," Madigan said.


You may use or reference this story with attribution and a link to
http://www.govtech.com/security/Attorney-General-Sends-a-Message-to.html


| More

Comments


Add Your Comment

You are solely responsible for the content of your comments. We reserve the right to remove comments that are considered profane, vulgar, obscene, factually inaccurate, off-topic, or considered a personal attack.

GovTech Papers and Case Studies View Library


Sponsored Links



Phone RSS

Government Best Practices

» A New Model for Human Resources
» Abandoning the High Cost of Enterprise Content Management



Government Technology
Public CIO
Emergency Management
Digital Communities