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Quick analysis: After a slow, slow August, things seem to be snapping back into place with consumer litigation up across the board in September, though CFPB complaints do seem to be on a bit of a decline.

  • CFPB complaints are down 22.4% from 3232 in August to 2640 in September (but this number is likely to go up by 200’ish over the next few weeks).
  • FDCPA lawsuits are up 5.5% from 740 in August to 783 in September.
  • FCRA lawsuits are up 11.9% from 156 in August to 177 in September.
  • TCPA lawsuits are up 2.1% from 189 in August to 193 in September.

Year to date, everything except FDCPA is still up, with FDCPA litigation lagging 12% from this time last year.

Class Actions: Of the 783 FDCPA cases filed, 73 (9.3%) of them are class actions. Of the 177 FCRA lawsuits filed, 12 (6.2%) are class actions. And of the 193 TCPA lawsuits filed, 24 (13.6%) are class actions. The TCPA percentage is particularly high this month.

Repeat Filers: Finally, 31% of the consumers who filed litigation in August are considered repeat filers, having filed similar litigation in the past.

Comparisons: Current Period: Previous Period: Previous Year Comp:
Sep 01 – 30, 2014 Aug 01 – 31, 2014 Sep 01 – 30, 2013
CFPB Complaints  2640 3232 -22.4% 2009 -31.4%
FDCPA lawsuits  783 740 5.5% 813 -3.8%
FCRA lawsuits  177 156 11.9% 209 -18.1%
TCPA lawsuits  193 189 2.1% 163 15.5%
YTD CFPB Complaints  29929 4407 85.3%
YTD FDCPA lawsuits  7229 8093 -12.0%
YTD FCRA lawsuits  1714 1684 1.8%
YTD TCPA lawsuits  1908 1338 29.9%

Complaint Statistics:

2640 consumers filed CFPB complaints against debt collectors and about 1072 consumers filed lawsuits under consumer statutes in Sep 2014. Here is an approximate breakdown:

  • 2640 CFPB Complaints
  • 783 FDCPA, 73 Class Action (9.3%)
  • 193 TCPA, 12 Class Action (6.2%)
  • 177 FCRA, 24 Class Action (13.6%)

Litigation Summary (scroll down for CFPB data):

  • Of those cases, there were about 1072 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
  • Of those plaintiffs, about 336, or (31%), had sued under consumer statutes before.
  • Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 1238 lawsuits since 2001
  • Actions were filed in 151 different US District Court branches.
  • About 824 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

  • 79 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
  • 50 Lawsuits: Pennsylvania Eastern District Court – Philadelphia
  • 45 Lawsuits: Colorado District Court – Denver
  • 39 Lawsuits: Florida Middle District Court – Tampa
  • 36 Lawsuits: California Southern District Court – San Diego
  • 36 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Brooklyn
  • 29 Lawsuits: Indiana Southern District Court – Indianapolis
  • 28 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Los Angeles
  • 28 Lawsuits: Wisconsin Eastern District Court – Milwaukee
  • 26 Lawsuits: Arizona District Court – Phoenix

The most active consumer attorneys were:

  • Representing 39 Consumers: SERGEI LEMBERG
  • Representing 21 Consumers: MOHAMMED OMAR BADWAN
  • Representing 21 Consumers: AHMAD TAYSEER SULAIMAN
  • Representing 20 Consumers: DANIEL JOHN MCGARRY
  • Representing 19 Consumers: SHIREEN HORMOZDI
  • Representing 18 Consumers: TRINETTE GRAGIRENA KENT
  • Representing 17 Consumers: MICHAEL ANTHONY EADES
  • Representing 17 Consumers: DAVID MICHAEL LARSON
  • Representing 17 Consumers: JOHN D BLYTHIN
  • Representing 17 Consumers: JOSHUA B SWIGART

Statistics Year to Date:

9394 total lawsuits for 2014, including:

  • 7229 FDCPA
  • 1714 FCRA
  • 1908 TCPA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs for 2014: 9211 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

  • Representing 415 Consumers: SERGEI LEMBERG
  • Representing 204 Consumers: DAVID MICHAEL LARSON
  • Representing 141 Consumers: JOHN THOMAS STEINKAMP
  • Representing 132 Consumers: MICHAEL ANTHONY EADES
  • Representing 130 Consumers: TODD M FRIEDMAN
  • Representing 125 Consumers: DAVID J PHILIPPS
  • Representing 122 Consumers: ANGIE K ROBERTSON
  • Representing 122 Consumers: ADAM JON FISHBEIN
  • Representing 117 Consumers: CRAIG THOR KIMMEL
  • Representing 106 Consumers: DANIEL A EDELMAN

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CFPB Complaint Statistics:

There were 2640 complaints filed against debt collectors in Sep 2014.

Total number of debt collectors complained about: 670

The types of debt behind the complaints were:

  • 782 Other (phone, health club, etc.) (30%)
  • 577 Credit card (22%)
  • 547 Unknown (21%)
  • 345 Medical (13%)
  • 150 Payday loan (6%)
  • 91 Mortgage (3%)
  • 65 Auto (2%)
  • 44 Non-federal student loan (2%)
  • 39 Federal student loan (1%)

Here is a breakdown of complaints:

  • 1135 Cont’d attempts collect debt not owed (43%)
  • 486 Communication tactics (18%)
  • 414 Disclosure verification of debt (16%)
  • 250 False statements or representation (9%)
  • 179 Improper contact or sharing of info (7%)
  • 176 Taking/threatening an illegal action (7%)

The top five subissues were:

  • 695 Debt is not mine (26%)
  • 304 Debt was paid (12%)
  • 283 Frequent or repeated calls (11%)
  • 261 Not given enough info to verify debt (10%)
  • 195 Attempted to collect wrong amount (7%)

The top states complaints were filed from are:

  • 323 Complaints: CA
  • 253 Complaints: TX
  • 217 Complaints: FL
  • 165 Complaints: NY
  • 113 Complaints: GA
  • 102 Complaints: NJ
  • 101 Complaints: IL
  • 97 Complaints: PA
  • 82 Complaints: OH
  • 75 Complaints: WA

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

  • 1846 Closed with explanation (70%)
  • 367 Closed with non-monetary relief (14%)
  • 193 In progress (7%)
  • 112 Closed (4%)
  • 81 Untimely response (3%)
  • 41 Closed with monetary relief (2%)

This includes 2495 (95%) timely responses to complaints, and 145 (5%) untimely responses.

Of the company responses, consumers accepted 0 (0%) of them, disputed 241 (9%) of them, and 2399 (91%) were N\A.

The top five days for complaints were:

  • 140 Complaints: Thu, 09/04/2014
  • 140 Complaints: Thu, 09/25/2014
  • 133 Complaints: Tue, 09/02/2014
  • 131 Complaints: Mon, 09/22/2014
  • 125 Complaints: Thu, 09/18/2014

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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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