United States Settles Suit Against Lead Generator for Assisting and Facilitating Illegal Robocalls

Response Tree LLC and its president and managing member Derek Thomas Doherty have agreed to a court order resolving allegations that they violated the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) by assisting and facilitating illegal telemarketing campaigns by operating as an unlawful lead generator and consent farm. Lead generators collect, aggregate and sell consumer information — or “leads” — for profit. Consent farms sell those leads coupled with consumers’ purported consent to receive certain types of telephone calls.

The stipulated order, which was entered today by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, prohibits Response Tree and Doherty from violating the TSR and from collecting or selling covered information — including consumers’ names, addresses, contact information, gender and age — in connection with lead generation. The order also imposes a $7 million civil penalty judgment, which is suspended based on the defendants’ inability to pay.

According to the complaint filed on Jan. 2, Response Tree and Doherty obtained consumer information and purported consent to receive certain telephone calls, including telephone calls that deliver a prerecorded message (otherwise known as robocalls) and calls made to telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry. The defendants allegedly did so by operating over 50 websites that deceptively induced consumers to disclose personal information by, for example, purporting to provide mortgage refinancing services. According to the complaint, the defendants then sold the consumer data to sellers of goods and services who then inundated American consumers with illegal robocalls based on the consumers’ invalid consent. Those robocalls delivered prerecorded marketing messages, and many of them were delivered to numbers listed on the National Do Not Call Registry.

“Today’s order is a victory in the Justice Department’s efforts to protect American consumers from illegal robocalls and to stop others, including those who operate unlawful consent farms, from enabling those calls,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “We will continue to work with the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the Telemarketing Sales Rule.”

“Response Tree fueled millions of illegal telemarketing calls by tricking consumers into turning over their personal information and selling that information to telemarketers,” said Director Samuel Levine of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The FTC will continue to target every corner of the illegal telemarketing ecosystem to protect consumers and hold wrongdoers accountable.”

The case was handled by attorneys in the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch, including Trial Attorney Rowan Reid and Assistant Director Rachael Doud, in conjunction with staff in the FTC’s Division of Marketing Practices.