Daily News and Information for the Mortgage Loan Originator
Company Fined $770,000 For Calling Leads
Monday, March 07, 2005
- By Staff Writer, The Originator Times
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a forfeiture notice to Dynasty Mortgage, LLC in the amount of $770,000 for 70 phone calls made by Dynasty to 50 consumers who were listed on the Federal Do Not Call List.According to the notice, Dynasty obtained the leads from a lead broker, who claimed the leads were scrubbed prior to Dynasty’s purchase of the lead.
The forfeiture notice also found that Dynasty failed to comply with the Federal Do Not Call laws by failing to adequately train employees, maintain written guidelines, maintain an internal company do not call list, and failure to regularly download the Federal Do Not Call List and use the current list to scrub phone numbers before calling consumers.
In the notice to Dynasty the FCC also made it clear that purchasing a scrubbed list from a lead broker or aggregator is not compliant under the law.
Additionally, the notice also emphasized that any permission given by a consumer to allow telemarketing calls must be evidenced by a signed, written agreement between the consumer and the calling company which states that the consumer agrees to be contacted by the calling company and includes the telephone number to which the calls may be placed and is non-transferable.
It also appears that many of the calls that were made by Dynasty to consumers were within state boundaries, commonly known as intrastate calls.
The Dynasty Mortgage forfeiture notice is likely to have a sweeping effect on the mortgage industry.“I think this case is a wakeup call to all the mortgage companies out there that thought the federal DNC laws didn’t affect them.This case shows that even companies that only conduct business in a local market within a single state need to comply with the federal guidelines,” said Barry Kaye, a Beverly Hills attorney that specializes in compliance issues for mortgage companies.“It’s a scary day for anyone that has relied upon buying “pre-scrubbed” leads since in and of itself this offers no protection.”
To date mortgage companies have been the leading industry cited in the citations issued by the Federal government.
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