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Quick analysis: 2016 Year in Review: FDCPA 12% Down, FCRA Up 3.9% & TCPA Up 31.8%

2016 ended about as we expected, with:

  • A significant loss of traction for FDCPA, down 12% from 2015 (though, notably, still higher than 2014)
  • FCRA more or less treading water with a less-than-anticipated 3.9% growth rate from 2015, but maintaining last year’s huge growth spurt over 2014 and prior years
  • Continued explosive growth for TCPA, finishing 31.8% ahead of 2015 and decisively overtaking the #2 spot from FCRA – even if it didn’t quite crack 5k this year (if I can make the safest-sounding prediction for 2017 this early, look for TCPA to surpass 5k filings this fall).

Putative class actions were all fairly robust in 2016, with 17.1% of all FDCPA suits being filed on behalf of a class, as well as 21.3% for TCPA and 9.7% for FCRA.

Todd Friedman in California was the most active consumer attorney of the year, representing 410 consumers.

A total of 14,401 consumers were plaintiffs in 15,860 separate filings for the year. Of those plaintiffs, about 4995 (or 35%), had sued under consumer statutes before.

CFPB complaints, as expected, overtook 2015’s numbers – but just barely at 1.4%. That is consistent with 2015’s small 2.1% increase over 2014. 2013 was an incomplete year (and the first year) so its numbers don’t say much.

Read on for all of the numbers!

Comparisons: Current Period: Previous Period: Previous Year Comp:
Dec 01, 2016
Dec 31, 2016		 Nov 01, 2016
Nov 30, 2016		 Dec 01, 2015
Dec 31, 2015
CFPB Complaints  3433 3286 4.5% 2903 18.3%
FDCPA lawsuits  784 739 6.1% 833 -5.9%
FCRA lawsuits  279 390 -28.5% 416 -32.9%
TCPA lawsuits  362 330 9.7% 300 20.7%
YTD CFPB Complaints  40735 40183 1.4%
YTD FDCPA lawsuits  10402 11816 -12.0%
YTD FCRA lawsuits  3960 3811 3.9%
YTD TCPA lawsuits  4860 3687 31.8%

 

Complaint Statistics:

3433 consumers filed CFPB complaints against debt collectors and about 1191 consumers filed lawsuits under consumer statutes from Dec 01, 2016 to Dec 31, 2016. Here is an approximate breakdown:

  • 3433 CFPB Complaints
  • 784 FDCPA, 120 Class Action (15.3%)
  • 362 TCPA, 64 Class Action (17.7%)
  • 279 FCRA, 38 Class Action (13.6%)

Litigation Summary (scroll down for CFPB data):

  • Of those cases, there were about 1191 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
  • Of those plaintiffs, about 452, or (38%), had sued under consumer statutes before.
  • Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 1795 lawsuits since 2001
  • Actions were filed in 150 different US District Court branches.
  • About 789 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

  • 82 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
  • 62 Lawsuits: Nevada District Court – Las Vegas
  • 51 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Los Angeles
  • 49 Lawsuits: Georgia Northern District Court – Atlanta
  • 48 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Brooklyn
  • 44 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Central Islip
  • 40 Lawsuits: Florida Middle District Court – Tampa
  • 35 Lawsuits: Florida Southern District Court – Fort Lauderdale
  • 33 Lawsuits: California Southern District Court – San Diego
  • 33 Lawsuits: Minnesota District Court – Dmn

The most active consumer attorneys were:

  • Representing 49 Consumers: CRAIG B SANDERS
  • Representing 45 Consumers: AHMAD TAYSEER SULAIMAN
  • Representing 37 Consumers: NATHAN CHARLES VOLHEIM
  • Representing 36 Consumers: DAVID H KRIEGER
  • Representing 33 Consumers: MATTHEW THOMAS BERRY
  • Representing 31 Consumers: MOHAMMED OMAR BADWAN
  • Representing 21 Consumers: MICHAEL KIND
  • Representing 21 Consumers: PAUL JONATHAN SIEG
  • Representing 21 Consumers: SERGEI LEMBERG
  • Representing 20 Consumers: HERBERT LO

Statistics Year to Date:
15860 total lawsuits for 2016, including:

  • 10402 FDCPA
  • 3960 FCRA
  • 4860 TCPA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs for 2016: 14401 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

  • Representing 410 Consumers: TODD M FRIEDMAN
  • Representing 403 Consumers: MATTHEW THOMAS BERRY
  • Representing 323 Consumers: CRAIG B SANDERS
  • Representing 315 Consumers: ELLIOT WAYNE GALE
  • Representing 307 Consumers: DAVID H KRIEGER
  • Representing 289 Consumers: PAUL JONATHAN SIEG
  • Representing 285 Consumers: AHMAD TAYSEER SULAIMAN
  • Representing 269 Consumers: MOHAMMED OMAR BADWAN
  • Representing 262 Consumers: ADRIAN ROBERT BACON
  • Representing 258 Consumers: NATHAN CHARLES VOLHEIM

——————————————————————————————————-
CFPB Complaint Statistics:

There were 3433 complaints filed against debt collectors from Dec 01, 2016 to Dec 31, 2016.

Total number of debt collectors complained about: 746

The types of debt behind the complaints were:

  • 1231 Other (i.e. phone, health club, etc.) (36%)
  • 698 Medical (20%)
  • 580 I do not know (17%)
  • 514 Credit card (15%)
  • 125 Payday loan (4%)
  • 93 Auto (3%)
  • 93 Mortgage (3%)
  • 50 Non-federal student loan (1%)
  • 49 Federal student loan (1%)

Here is a breakdown of complaints:

  • 1520 Contd attempts collect debt not owed (44%)
  • 1007 Disclosure verification of debt (29%)
  • 370 Communication tactics (11%)
  • 195 False statements or representation (6%)
  • 190 Improper contact or sharing of info (6%)
  • 151 Taking/threatening an illegal action (4%)

The top five subissues were:

  • 898 Debt is not mine (26%)
  • 747 Not given enough info to verify debt (22%)
  • 362 Debt was paid (11%)
  • 222 Frequent or repeated calls (6%)
  • 215 Right to dispute notice not received (6%)

The top states complaints were filed from are:

  • 424 Complaints: CA
  • 412 Complaints: FL
  • 367 Complaints: TX
  • 225 Complaints: GA
  • 172 Complaints: NY
  • 141 Complaints: NC
  • 118 Complaints: OH
  • 109 Complaints: VA
  • 106 Complaints: IL
  • 102 Complaints: NJ

The status of the month’s complaints are as follows:

  • 3433 (100%)

This includes 3173 (92%) timely responses to complaints, and 260 (8%) untimely responses.

Of the company responses, consumers accepted 0 (%) of them, disputed 528 (15%) of them, and 2905 (85%) were N\A.

The top five days for complaints were:

  • 257 Complaints: Fri, 12/16/2016
  • 189 Complaints: Mon, 12/19/2016
  • 181 Complaints: Mon, 12/12/2016
  • 175 Complaints: Wed, 12/07/2016
  • 168 Complaints: Wed, 12/21/2016

 

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API Access


We offer two powerful APIs to businesses that communicate with consumers:

  • The primary Litigious Consumer Scrub uses a combination of name, geography (and optionally SSN) to identify consumers who have filed lawsuits in the past.
  • The Litigious Consumer Phone Scrub pulls every phone number from our proprietary database of litigants and runs your phones against ours.

These APIs allow you to check your data against our database on the fly. Clients love using this to handle risk management without missing a beat in their daily workflow.

Workers Comp Scrub


Workers Comp-inspired FDCPA lawsuits are growing aggressively, particularly in Florida. Only WebRecon can tell you who in your database may have a Florida Worker’s Comp case filed that could trigger litigation against you.

You can’t stop 100% of all lawsuits, but if you collect medical in Florida and you don’t have a process in place to show the court that you have a way to check every file against the Workers Comp database, then you have lost the case before it even begins.

Knock these suits out of the park with the Workers Comp Scrub.

Our Monthly Client Newsletter with The Litigant Hotsheet


Anyone can get our guest newsletter, but only clients get the version with the Litigant Hotsheet –  identifying the most active consumer Plaintiffs filing suit in jurisdictions around the country each month. Grab a coffee, shut your door and open your database to make sure you are doing all you can to stay safe.

Individual Vendor Consumer Complaint Search


Just like Vendor Monitoring, but without the monitoring. Search any business’s history of consumer complaints (Litigation, CFPB, BBB, State AG) with the click of a button! Great for on-the-fly gut checks of the companies you do business with.

Vendor Monitoring


Through vicarious liability, you can be held accountable for the bad behavior of your vendors. If they abuse consumers, for all intents and purposes, so do you. This is a big freakin’ deal!

But fear not, friend. WebRecon can track consumer litigation, CFPB, BBB and State AG Office complaints against the companies you do business with.

When a new complaint of any kind is filed against any of the companies you are monitoring, we’ll automatically push a report out to you with all of the publicly available details so you can react accordingly and if necessary, protect your interests.

The Litigious Consumer Phone Scrub


Would you knowingly dial a number attached to a consumer with a history of litigation? Of course not.

But thousands of companies do just that, every single day. If you’d like to know who they are, simply review the court dockets. They are the ones getting sued the most.

Sure, you can stop dialing consumers. But your marketing and operations teams might not be too excited about that plan.

Another idea? Identify the consumers most likely to sue you, based on previous litigation histories, and just don’t call them.

Identify high-risk phones quickly & easily, before you expose yourself to unnecessary risk.

Litigation Context Search


This is really cool.

Our primary search engine is really designed to search for parties to litigation. Need to know more about a consumer plaintiff? That’s easy. Defendant? Check. Lawyer? No problem.

But if you need to find all 1099C lawsuits filed in July 2020… not so much.

Which is why we developed the Context Search. We have pulled out and indexed the full text from over 140k consumer lawsuits and made them available to you in a search engine, with more than 1000 new lawsuits added each month. Use it to search the text of filed litigation so you can easily identify those hard-to-define trends and cases worth following.

Individual Search Engine


Instantly and easily search our proprietary database for any lawsuit participant – Plaintiff, Defendant or Attorney.

In the results, we’ll show you the full consumer litigation history of any participant, including the “docket data” (who, what, why, where, when) and – in many cases – we can even provide a copy of their actual filed lawsuits.

You can also search by phone, date range, federal/state, class action, court, statute, etc. We offer a ton of flexibility to get you the exact search result you are looking for.

The Litigant Alert Ongoing Monitoring Process


Just like our one-time batch process, but without the whole “one time” thing.

When one of your consumers files new litigation against anyone in the future, you should be the first to know. Our monitoring service can make that happen.

WebRecon can monitor your entire database (or any segment of it) for future instances of consumer litigation filed by the very consumers you are working with, right now!

It is simple to add new consumers to the watchlist, remove inactive accounts, download full reports, etc.

Best of all, we only charge you for the volume of your monitoring database – not the frequency of the searches. Search daily, weekly, every Tuesday and Friday, the 15th of each month, whatever – it is totally up to you! You won’t pay a penny more.

The Litigant Alert One-Time Batch Process


This is our flagship service. Find out why hundreds of companies won’t contact any consumers before running them through WebRecon’s Litigant Alert.

This process identifies consumers with a history of litigation quickly & easily. If they have ever filed lawsuits under FDCPA, TCPA, FCRA or similar statutes, you’ll find out here. 

WebRecon’s proprietary database is simply the most comprehensive collection of dangerous consumer litigation data in existence. 

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