‘Prolific’ TCPA Litigant Sues Shore Capital to Halt Its ‘Cold’ Telemarketing Calls
Shore Capital is engaged in a "scheme" to sell mortgage services via "cold calls" to residential phone numbers listed for years on the "protected federal" do not call registry, alleged plaintiff Paul Sapan’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action Friday…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
(docket 8:23-cv-01974) in U.S. District Court for Central California in Santa Ana. Shore makes the types of illegal telemarketing calls that are prohibited by the TCPA, “which gives victims of junk calls a private right of action to sue for the intrusion on their privacy,” it said. The cold calls are made to “massive lists of phone numbers” in the U.S., “with no regard” for whether those numbers have been listed on the national DNC registry or not, it said. Shore has “intentionally violated” the TCPA in a “so-far successful attempt to sell mortgage services for years,” it said. Sapan alleges that Shore made three calls to his home phone number in October 2019 to pitch its mortgage refinance services, though the number continuously was listed on the national DNC registry since December 2007. Sapan “pleads on information and belief” that officers, managers and employees for Shore “knew about the illegal telemarketing calls,” and in fact “ordered such calls to be made,” said his complaint. The conduct was “cold call junk telemarketing not directed to any specific person,” it said. The calls used “a technically sophisticated calling system” that could illegally hide caller IDs, it said. That indicates “that this was an intentional and organized corporate sales effort and not a rogue employee or random event,” it said. The class action seeks injunctive relief, plus an award of $1,500 for each TCPA violation “found to have been willful,” it said. Diamond Resorts, the defendant in another TCPA class action brought by Sapan, recently called Sapan one of the “most prolific TCPA litigants in the country” for having filed dozens of federal TCPA lawsuits since August 2012 (see 2308310039). Sapan responded in that case that he sees himself as a “TCPA Robin Hood” who sues "junk callers" for their illegal calls, “then gives his portion of the recovery to charity.”