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Quick analysis: 2022 Starts With a Bang

CFPB Complaints (+1.9%) inched up over December, but FDCPA (+13.1%), FCRA (+14.2%) and TCPA (+35.1%) lawsuits all exploded out of the gate with double-digit percent increases over their previous month numbers.

In other news, putative class actions represented 9.1% of FDCPA, 39.7% of TCPA and 4.0% of FCRA lawsuits filed last month. About 43%(!) of all plaintiffs who filed suit last month had filed at least once before. And finally, Florida attorney Thomas John Patti took the top spot for representing the most consumers in January and the year so far with 79 consumers represented.

Current Month: Previous Month: Previous
Year:		   Year to Date: Year to
Date Comp:
  Jan 01, 2022
Jan 31, 2022		 Dec 01, 2021 
 Dec 31, 2021		 Jan 01, 2021 
 Jan 31, 2021		   Jan 01, 2022 
 Jan 31, 2022		 Jan 01, 2021 
 Jan 31, 2021
                   
CFPB  5035 4941 1.9% 5031 0.1%   5035 5031 0.1%
                   
FDCPA  518 458 13.1% 494 4.9%   518 494 4.9%
FCRA  524 459 14.2% 461 13.7%   524 461 13.7%
TCPA  131 97 35.1% 239 -45.2%   131 239 -45.2%

Complaint Statistics:

5035 consumers filed CFPB complaints, and about 1006 consumers filed lawsuits under consumer statutes from Jan 01, 2022 to Jan 31, 2022.

  • 5035 CFPB Complaints
  • 518 FDCPA, 47 Class Action (9.1%)
  • 131 TCPA, 52 Class Action (39.7%)
  • 524 FCRA, 21 Class Action (4.0%)

Litigation Summary (scroll down for CFPB data):

  • Of those cases, there were about 1006 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
  • Of those plaintiffs, about 429, or (43%), had sued under consumer statutes before.
  • Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 4177 lawsuits since 2001
  • Actions were filed in 151 different US District Court branches.
  • About 763 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

  • 69 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
  • 53 Lawsuits: Georgia Northern District Court – Atlanta
  • 53 Lawsuits: Florida Middle District Court – Tampa
  • 43 Lawsuits: Florida Southern District Court – Miami
  • 42 Lawsuits: Florida Southern District Court – Fort Lauderdale
  • 33 Lawsuits: Minnesota District Court – Dmn
  • 31 Lawsuits: Nevada District Court – Las Vegas
  • 29 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Brooklyn
  • 28 Lawsuits: Pennsylvania Eastern District Court – Philadelphia
  • 25 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Western Division – Los Angeles

The most active consumer attorneys were:

  • Representing 79 Consumers: THOMAS JOHN PATTI
  • Representing 55 Consumers: JIBRAEL JARALLAH SAID HINDI
  • Representing 28 Consumers: MATTHEW THOMAS BERRY
  • Representing 17 Consumers: CHRISTOPHER NEIL ARMOR
  • Representing 16 Consumers: JONATHAN F RABURN
  • Representing 15 Consumers: SYED HASEEB HUSSAIN
  • Representing 14 Consumers: DAVID J S MADGETT
  • Representing 14 Consumers: OMAR TAYSEER SULAIMAN
  • Representing 14 Consumers: YAAKOV SAKS

Statistics Year to Date:
1053 total lawsuits for 2022, including:

  • 518 FDCPA
  • 524 FCRA
  • 131 TCPA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs for 2022: 1006 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

  • Representing 79 Consumers: THOMAS JOHN PATTI
  • Representing 55 Consumers: JIBRAEL JARALLAH SAID HINDI
  • Representing 28 Consumers: MATTHEW THOMAS BERRY
  • Representing 17 Consumers: CHRISTOPHER NEIL ARMOR
  • Representing 16 Consumers: JONATHAN F RABURN
  • Representing 15 Consumers: SYED HASEEB HUSSAIN
  • Representing 14 Consumers: DAVID J S MADGETT
  • Representing 14 Consumers: OMAR TAYSEER SULAIMAN
  • Representing 14 Consumers: YAAKOV SAKS

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

There were 5035 complaints filed against debt collectors from Jan 01, 2022 to Jan 31, 2022.

Total number of debt collectors complained about: 794

The types of debt behind the complaints were:

  • 1294 I do not know (26%)
  • 1289 Credit card debt (26%)
  • 1169 Other debt (23%)
  • 756 Medical debt (15%)
  • 251 Auto debt (5%)
  • 114 Payday loan debt (2%)
  • 82 Mortgage debt (2%)
  • 43 Private student loan debt (1%)
  • 37 Federal student loan debt (1%)

Here is a breakdown of complaints:

  • 2739 Attempts to collect debt not owed (54%)
  • 1030 Written notification about debt (20%)
  • 429 Took or threatened to take negative or legal action (9%)
  • 390 False statements or representation (8%)
  • 365 Communication tactics (7%)
  • 82 Threatened to contact someone or share information improperly (2%)

The top five subissues were:

  • 1463 Debt is not yours (29%)
  • 790 Debt was result of identity theft (16%)
  • 717 Didnt receive enough information to verify debt (14%)
  • 406 Debt was paid (8%)
  • 317 Attempted to collect wrong amount (6%)

The top states complaints were filed from are:

  • 623 Complaints: TX
  • 590 Complaints: FL
  • 479 Complaints: GA
  • 447 Complaints: CA
  • 286 Complaints: NY
  • 187 Complaints: IL
  • 175 Complaints: PA
  • 170 Complaints: NJ
  • 170 Complaints: OH
  • 141 Complaints: NC

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

  • 3913 Closed with explanation (78%)
  • 553 In progress (11%)
  • 481 Closed with non-monetary relief (10%)
  • 59 Untimely response (1%)
  • 29 Closed with monetary relief (1%)

This includes 4898 (97%) timely responses to complaints, and 137 (3%) untimely responses.

WebRecon LLC is a part of the Americloud Holdings LLC family of companies. (855) WEB-RECON

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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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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.

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.

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.

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.