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Quick analysis: 2021 Starts Down Compared To 2020

It’s something, right? All three of the major statutes are down in January from where they were a year ago at this time: FDCPA (-24.3%), FCRA (-4.4%) and TCPA (-55.6%). Of course, FCRA and TCPA are both up over December 2020 (+3.1% and +23.2% respectively) and FDCPA is only down by .2%, so it is not terribly newsworthy.

Of course, this can be viewed as standard fluctuation and doesn’t really offer much in the way of predictive value for next month or the rest of 2021 for that matter, but it is still a nice headline and we’re sticking with it.

Of the three, TCPA had by far the most interesting January. Down -55.6% from a year ago but up +23.2% from the previous month, TCPA wins the award for creating the most drama in an otherwise blah kind of month.

On the CFPB complaint front, complaints rose +3% from the previous month and are up a not insignificant +27.3% from last January. A sign of the 2021 to come? We’ll have to wait and see.

In other news, putative class actions represented 17.5% of FDCPA, 54% of TCPA and 4.6% of FCRA lawsuits filed last month.

About 35% of all plaintiffs who filed suit last month had filed at least once before.

And finally, for the second January in a row, Los Angeles attorney Todd M. Friedman represented more consumers than anyone else in January (52) which also makes him the most active consumer attorney of the year (so far…).

Current Month: Previous Month: Previous
Year:		 Year to Date: Year to
Date Comp:
Jan 01, 2021
Jan 31, 2021		 Dec 01, 2020
Dec 31, 2020		 Jan 01, 2020
Jan 31, 2020		 Jan 01, 2021
Jan 31, 2021		 Jan 01, 2020
Jan 31, 2020
CFPB  4796 4657 3.0% 3766 27.3% 4796 3766 27.3%
FDCPA  492 493 -0.2% 650 -24.3% 492 650 -24.3%
FCRA  461 447 3.1% 482 -4.4% 461 482 -4.4%
TCPA  239 194 23.2% 538 -55.6% 239 538 -55.6%

 

Complaint Statistics:

4796 consumers filed CFPB complaints, and about 1080 consumers filed lawsuits under consumer statutes from Jan 01, 2021 to Jan 31, 2021.

  • 4796 CFPB Complaints
  • 492 FDCPA, 86 Class Action (17.5%)
  • 239 TCPA, 129 Class Action (54.0%)
  • 461 FCRA, 21 Class Action (4.6%)

Litigation Summary (scroll down for CFPB data):

  • Of those cases, there were about 1080 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
  • Of those plaintiffs, about 378, or (35%), had sued under consumer statutes before.
  • Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 3827 lawsuits since 2001
  • Actions were filed in 162 different US District Court branches.
  • About 735 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

  • 73 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Western Division – Los Angeles
  • 68 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
  • 47 Lawsuits: Pennsylvania Eastern District Court – Philadelphia
  • 43 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Brooklyn
  • 43 Lawsuits: Georgia Northern District Court – Atlanta
  • 28 Lawsuits: Florida Middle District Court – Tampa
  • 27 Lawsuits: Minnesota District Court – Dmn
  • 26 Lawsuits: New York Southern District Court – Foley Square
  • 23 Lawsuits: California Southern District Court – San Diego
  • 22 Lawsuits: Indiana Southern District Court – Indianapolis

The most active consumer attorneys were:

  • Representing 52 Consumers: TODD M FRIEDMAN
  • Representing 44 Consumers: ADRIAN ROBERT BACON
  • Representing 28 Consumers: CRAIG B SANDERS
  • Representing 22 Consumers: MATTHEW B WEISBERG
  • Representing 22 Consumers: GARY SCHAFKOPF
  • Representing 22 Consumers: ELLIOT ALBERT ROSENBERGER
  • Representing 22 Consumers: BLAKE MAKOA KAWABATA
  • Representing 19 Consumers: NATHAN CHARLES VOLHEIM
  • Representing 18 Consumers: ALEJANDRO EMMANUEL FIGUEROA
  • Representing 18 Consumers: JONATHAN MARK CADER

Statistics Year to Date:
1068 total lawsuits for 2021, including:

  • 492 FDCPA
  • 461 FCRA
  • 239 TCPA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs for 2021: 1080 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

  • Representing 52 Consumers: TODD M FRIEDMAN
  • Representing 44 Consumers: ADRIAN ROBERT BACON
  • Representing 28 Consumers: CRAIG B SANDERS
  • Representing 22 Consumers: MATTHEW B WEISBERG
  • Representing 22 Consumers: GARY SCHAFKOPF
  • Representing 22 Consumers: ELLIOT ALBERT ROSENBERGER
  • Representing 22 Consumers: BLAKE MAKOA KAWABATA
  • Representing 19 Consumers: NATHAN CHARLES VOLHEIM
  • Representing 18 Consumers: ALEJANDRO EMMANUEL FIGUEROA
  • Representing 18 Consumers: JONATHAN MARK CADER

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

There were 4796 complaints filed against debt collectors from Jan 01, 2021 to Jan 31, 2021.

Total number of debt collectors complained about: 783

The types of debt behind the complaints were:

  • 1338 Credit card debt (28%)
  • 1283 Other debt (27%)
  • 937 I do not know (20%)
  • 767 Medical debt (16%)
  • 221 Auto debt (5%)
  • 100 Payday loan debt (2%)
  • 77 Mortgage debt (2%)
  • 43 Private student loan debt (1%)
  • 30 Federal student loan debt (1%)

Here is a breakdown of complaints:

  • 2766 Attempts to collect debt not owed (58%)
  • 979 Written notification about debt (20%)
  • 347 False statements or representation (7%)
  • 335 Took or threatened to take negative or legal action (7%)
  • 296 Communication tactics (6%)
  • 73 Threatened to contact someone or share information improperly (2%)

The top five subissues were:

  • 1438 Debt is not yours (30%)
  • 839 Debt was result of identity theft (17%)
  • 715 Didnt receive enough information to verify debt (15%)
  • 429 Debt was paid (9%)
  • 282 Attempted to collect wrong amount (6%)

The top states complaints were filed from are:

  • 703 Complaints: TX
  • 531 Complaints: FL
  • 441 Complaints: CA
  • 418 Complaints: GA
  • 306 Complaints: NY
  • 220 Complaints: MA
  • 163 Complaints: IL
  • 163 Complaints: PA
  • 122 Complaints: NJ
  • 118 Complaints: NC

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

  • 3840 Closed with explanation (80%)
  • 439 In progress (9%)
  • 405 Closed with non-monetary relief (8%)
  • 89 Untimely response (2%)
  • 23 Closed with monetary relief (0%)

This includes 4658 (97%) timely responses to complaints, and 138 (3%) untimely responses.

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

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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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