An Irvine-based company allegedly tricked hundreds of thousands of consumers into providing personal information that later was sold to telemarketers, federal regulators allege in a proposed $7 million settlement agreement that demands the activities cease.
The agreement would settle a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court against Response Tree LLC and its president, Derek Thomas Doherty. Under the agreement, Doherty would be banned from assisting in robocalls to phone numbers on the national Do Not Call Registry.
The proposed $7 million judgment would be suspended based on Response Tree and Doherty’s inability to pay. However, if the defendants are later found to have misrepresented their financial condition, the full amount of the judgment would be due immediately, according to the FTC.
The lawsuit alleges that, since at least 2019, Response Tree operated more than 50 websites designed to deceive consumers into providing their personal information for supposed mortgage refinancing loans and other services. That information later was sold as leads to telemarketers offering a multitude of products and services, including solar panels, hearing aids, auto warranties, and Social Security disability services, according to the FTC
As a result, Response Tree fueled millions of illegal telemarketing calls, Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.
“The FTC will continue to target every corner of the illegal telemarketing ecosystem to protect consumers and hold wrongdoers accountable,” Levine said.
Doherty could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday, Jan. 10.
According to the lawsuit, Response Tree websites — including PatriotRefi.com, AbodeDefense.com and TheRetailRewards.com — actually were “consent farms” that used deceptive and manipulative “dark patterns” to induce consumers to provide their personal information, obscuring hard-to-find and…
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