10 Million Dollar Judgment Against Debt Collector Global AG LLC Spoofing Caller ID

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10 Million Dollar Judgment Against Debt Collector Global AG LLC Spoofing Caller ID

" a women received several threatening calls with a caller ID showing as being the West Virginia Ohio county Sherriff’s office. Luckily for her she recorded the conversations and hired an attorney. The Ohio county Sherriff’s office explained to her that the calls were spoofed. She and her attorney filed suit and after an initial appearance by the attorneys for Global AG LLC (doing business as RFA of Santa Ana California) no one appeared at the court hearing besides the plaintiff and her attorney. Ohio circuit court judge Martin Gaughan awarded the plaintiff 10 million dollars, including punitive and compensatory damages."

Source: http://statesboro.biz/News/743/10-Million-Dol ... -Caller-ID.aspx

With Ten million on the line let's hope some aggressive California attorney figures out a way tp go after Global AG in CA to get  a judgement there.   Don't even know if it's possible, but would be sweet.

We're working on it ;-)

The moral of the story is this was all a waste of money and the person filing the suit simply is stuck with legal bills and won't get a dime.

Things like this are good for the legal system because they get paid no matter what.

Why would an attorney file something against a company without first checking to see their ability to pay the damages back?

What should have been done is people should of been arrested for hijacking and/or otherwise compromising our telephone system.

Last time I checked it's a regulated industry by the federal government and people have been arrested for making prank calls so this shouldn't be any different.

That would teach a lesson.

@Don Wallace:  You are uninformed about how the legal system works.  I am the plaintiff in this case and I have not paid - nor will I ever pay - a penny to the very courageous lawyers that represented me -- until the judgment is collected.  

As far as people being arrested - I attempted that route -- and got no where.  

For your information, California - where this company operates - stopped regulating debt collectors a few years ago - and I suspect that's why so many of them are based there now.

There are literally hundreds of complaints about this company on 800notes.  With the size of this judgment, there is a huge incentive to track the perpetrator down and make them pay.   We are working on it.

Incidentally, the article linked above doesn't come anywhere close to expressing the vulgarity and perversity of the verbal sexual assault that I was subjected to.  Here are more details:

http://www.theintelligencer.net/page/content.detail/id/557911.html

The complaints about this company strongly suggest that I am far from the only person they have terrorized.

Victory isn't always about winning a jackpot. Ms. Mey has been down a similar path before and probably knew the risks, and probably knows the award is unrealistic. Certainly it's a much more ambitious amount than the FTC has scored against the debt industry. It will damage the opposition even if it never pays up.

The bulk of that award can't possibly be FDCPA and FCRA statutory fines. This is about sending a message at a volume any scofflaw collector can hear in its sleep. Not everyone is fortunate to find a decent consumer lawyer to work on contingency, and perhaps principle. Maybe we should see how this plays out before any more stones are chucked.

This Reliant Financial Associates / Global Attorney Group (GAG?!) bunch sounds so much like the Indian/[***] fake collectors I began to wonder if that's the reason they're so elusive. It bears reminding, though, that several collectors on American soil have used the same playbook.

This may be coincidental, but there are parallels to an Ohio firm, Reliant Recovery Solutions / Reliant Capital Solutions. They reportedly handle back tax and municipal debt, but in a deceptive manner. Several victims have reported taking calls from reps posing as from the Ohio Attorney General office, if you can believe the gall. The phantom name aspect also reminds me of the Pacific Management Group collections criminals in Corona CA, who seem to rotate business names like socks in a dresser drawer.


(Orange County)

Whups, goofed in my submission there. I only wanted to toss out that the OC Weekly (Orange County) quoted several 800Notes comments from a thread on RFA/GAG.

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/08 ... obal.php?page=2

No the moral of the story is that a company was in violation and they paid for it.  Get used to it buddy their's a new sheriff in town and he is shipping you people out!!

Awesome, I had them calling me now saying that there is a claim being filed against me each time they call themselves special investigators.  First time I looked up the phone number and read some interesting events from others.

If you want to know who ran this [***] hole and taught them how to conduct themselves as for Rain.

I have to wonder if I have encountered the same.  I have had multiple calls from a company asking if I am aware of a case being filed against me.  But they can't tell me dates of the debt or who I owe the money to.  They started off saying I owed them $18K  (Definitely a company I would remember).

I'm confused about the laws allowing us to record calls.  I can see if the recording is from the answering machine, then the caller who leaves threatening messages is just putting evidence in the hands of the victim.  What if the bully waits to threaten the consumer after he/she answers the phone?  I have no way to record that conversation.  Isn't it illegal to tape a conversation if both parties aren't aware that the conversation is being taped?  And, no, I'm not confused about my answering machine recording messages.

In the US, most states allow "single party" recording (that is, only one person has to consent to recording--namely you...,) but some, like telemarketing-friendly Florida, require two-party consent to record a call.   Here is a website that gives the dope an all fifty states:  http://www.rcfp.org/can-we-tape/state-state-guide

If you live in a two-party state, you can  still inform the caller that you intend to record and if they do not consent you will not talk to them.    Telemarketers will sometimes just keep talking, pretending to ignore the request.   If they do, say, "since you refuse I can't talk to you," and hang up.   Often simply saying you intend to record will cause them to hang up.

Oddly enough, a similar question arose here earlier today.
https://800notes.com/forum/ta-4cf31881035f926/shadowcreek-capital

Toby beat me to recommending that excellent resource for journalists, which clears some fog on this issue better than anything I know of.

A bit under a quarter of the United States require "all party" consent to record phone conversations. "Two party" is a misnomer, since in theory one could record a three-way or a conference call. For purposes of gathering evidence of a debt collector's misdeeds, one party can announce recording and the others merely acknowledge. I believe the lack of objection also equals consent. The oft-heard "may be monitored for quality assurance" phrase is also a sufficient disclosure. The consensus I've seen is that the *other* parties may then also record, even if done quietly, since the expectation of privacy has already been waived.

As Toby said, in "single party" states you essentially give yourself consent to record and may do so unannounced. It's not hazardous to hedge your bet and announce, except that the other party may switch abruptly to Very Best Behavior mode and not provide the violation ammo you need.

When you see protracted legal battles over the issue, it's usually because the call crossed state lines and one state was an "all party" state, and most importantly, something was captured which hurts the complainer's chances of winning the case. ("Your honor, that recording of my client calling the Plaintiff a 'filthy [***]' and telling her to find a new home for her children because a sheriff is coming in thirty minutes to handcuff her violated my client's precious right to privacy.") Then the case is tied in knots over which state has the controlling law, and generally the tougher "all party" state is favored.

Relief came in August 2010 when a federal appeals court ruled that a secret recording, AKA single party consent, does not violate the Wiretap Act when the recording is made with no intent of committing some other wrongdoing. The ruling concerned surreptitious recording of an estate planning dispute, made by the son of a woman who died of lung cancer four days later without an executed will.

Linked below is the Wired article and the actual ruling:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/covert-iphone-audio-recording
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2010/08/wiretap.pdf

While a ruling is not the same as a law, this one can become a mighty mallet for breaking the chains of an all-party consent argument. The opinion cites other cases supporting single party consent, and spells out the matter of intent:

"If, at the moment he hits “record,” the offender does not intend to use the recording for criminal or tortious purposes, there is no violation. But if, at the time of the recording, the offender plans to use the recording to harm the other party to the conversation, a civil cause of action exists under the Wiretap Act."

One suggested way to end-run the state law conflict is to simply not submit a media recording to the court, substituting a written memorialization of the recorded event. Whether or not you have an eidetic memory is the for the opposition to guess as its hide gets tanned by a judge.


P.S. - The initial commentor Mr. Harkleroad won't be back to respond. He has a habit of splash-diving into a forum, making a handful of diatribes against debt collectors, and then vanishing when he finds that sales of his dubious self-help books have not spiked as a result.