Woman With 35 Cell Phones Keeps Busy With TCPA Lawsuits

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act prohibits businesses from making unsolicited automated recorded phone calls without written consent, and the penalties are severe. Or, considered from another angle, you could say the rewards are attractive. Potential damages range from $500 to $1500, per violation. Nonetheless, many companies persist, and perhaps would say it’s part of their business. An article from Legal Newsline, published in Forbes, features a woman in Pennsylvania who flat-out admits that filing TCPA lawsuits is part of her business, or maybe all of it.  “It’s what I do,” says Melody Stoops. She keeps 35 cell phones in a shoe box, and when she gets an unsolicited pitch call from such companies as Comenity, Credit One, Navient and Wells Fargo, she carefully documents it. So far she has filed 11 lawsuits and sent out more than twice that many demand letters. In her lawsuit against Well Fargo, presumably typical in its logic, she argues the company violated her economic as well as her privacy interest, because although it was their call, she was paying for the minutes.