Quick analysis: FDCPA cases (+4.1%) are the only consumer complaint category up in May. Take a wild guess as to why that might be. Spoiler alert… it starts with “Hun” and ends with “Stein”. As of today, there are at least 225 filings since late April that could be considered copycat Hunstein cases.

TCPA cases (-19.6%) and FCRA cases (-5.2%) are both down in May, along with CFPB complaints about debt collectors (-7.4%), though those are still way up for the year (+34.1%).

YTD TCPA is down (-56%) but that number is complicated by an anomalous early 2020 surge in plaintiffs, making 2021 numbers seem lower in contrast than they should be. YTD FCRA is up a bit (+2.7%), keeping FCRA as the only consistently growing statute year over year.

In other news, putative class actions represented 30.5% of FDCPA, 55% of TCPA and 4.7% of FCRA lawsuits filed last month.

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

And finally, St. Louis, Missouri attorney Michael T. George took the top spot for representing the most consumers – 37 – for the month of May. Georgia attorney Matthew Thomas Berry kept the title of the most active consumer attorney of the year with 102 consumers represented so far in 2021

Current Month: Previous Month: Previous
Year:		 Year to Date: Year to
Date Comp:
May 01, 2021
May 31, 2021		 Apr 01, 2021
Apr 30, 2021		 May 01, 2020
May 31, 2020		 Jan 01, 2021
May 31, 2021		 Jan 01, 2020
May 31, 2020
CFPB  5263 5685 -7.4% 4423 19.0% 28005 20883 34.1%
FDCPA  609 585 4.1% 524 16.2% 2718 3021 -10.0%
FCRA  423 446 -5.2% 425 -0.5% 2257 2198 2.7%
TCPA  111 138 -19.6% 208 -46.6% 847 1927 -56.0%

 

Complaint Statistics:

5263 consumers filed CFPB complaints, and about 1041 consumers filed lawsuits under consumer statutes from May 01, 2021 to May 31, 2021.

  • 5263 CFPB Complaints
  • 609 FDCPA, 186 Class Action (30.5%)
  • 111 TCPA, 61 Class Action (55.0%)
  • 423 FCRA, 20 Class Action (4.7%)

Litigation Summary (scroll down for CFPB data):

  • Of those cases, there were about 1041 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
  • Of those plaintiffs, about 360, or (35%), had sued under consumer statutes before.
  • Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 1991 lawsuits since 2001
  • Actions were filed in 150 different US District Court branches.
  • About 636 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

  • 64 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
  • 59 Lawsuits: Florida Middle District Court – Tampa
  • 50 Lawsuits: Georgia Northern District Court – Atlanta
  • 44 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Western Division – Los Angeles
  • 43 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Brooklyn
  • 34 Lawsuits: New York Eastern District Court – Central Islip
  • 29 Lawsuits: Florida Southern District Court – Fort Lauderdale
  • 28 Lawsuits: Nevada District Court – Las Vegas
  • 26 Lawsuits: New Jersey District Court – Newark
  • 25 Lawsuits: New Jersey District Court – Trenton

The most active consumer attorneys were:

  • Representing 37 Consumers: MICHAEL T GEORGE
  • Representing 26 Consumers: YOSEF STEINMETZ
  • Representing 25 Consumers: MATTHEW THOMAS BERRY
  • Representing 25 Consumers: DAVID M BARSHAY
  • Representing 21 Consumers: TAMIR SALAND
  • Representing 17 Consumers: YITZCHAK ZELMAN
  • Representing 17 Consumers: EDWARD Y KROUB
  • Representing 16 Consumers: ALEJANDRO EMMANUEL FIGUEROA
  • Representing 14 Consumers: NATHAN CHARLES VOLHEIM
  • Representing 14 Consumers: CRAIG CARLEY MARCHIANDO

Statistics Year to Date:
5265 total lawsuits for 2021, including:

  • 2718 FDCPA
  • 2257 FCRA
  • 847 TCPA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs for 2021: 5092 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

  • Representing 102 Consumers: MATTHEW THOMAS BERRY
  • Representing 93 Consumers: DAVID M BARSHAY
  • Representing 83 Consumers: TODD M FRIEDMAN
  • Representing 79 Consumers: YOSEF STEINMETZ
  • Representing 79 Consumers: CRAIG B SANDERS
  • Representing 77 Consumers: AMY LYNN BENNECOFF GINSBURG
  • Representing 70 Consumers: NATHAN CHARLES VOLHEIM
  • Representing 69 Consumers: ADRIAN ROBERT BACON
  • Representing 65 Consumers: DAVID W HEMMINGER
  • Representing 62 Consumers: ALEJANDRO EMMANUEL FIGUEROA

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

There were 5263 complaints filed against debt collectors from May 01, 2021 to May 31, 2021.

Total number of debt collectors complained about: 801

The types of debt behind the complaints were:

  • 1491 Credit card debt (28%)
  • 1213 Other debt (23%)
  • 1206 I do not know (23%)
  • 902 Medical debt (17%)
  • 217 Auto debt (4%)
  • 116 Payday loan debt (2%)
  • 49 Mortgage debt (1%)
  • 35 Private student loan debt (1%)
  • 34 Federal student loan debt (1%)

Here is a breakdown of complaints:

  • 2601 Attempts to collect debt not owed (49%)
  • 1520 Written notification about debt (29%)
  • 379 Took or threatened to take negative or legal action (7%)
  • 379 False statements or representation (7%)
  • 319 Communication tactics (6%)
  • 65 Threatened to contact someone or share information improperly (1%)

The top five subissues were:

  • 1425 Debt is not yours (27%)
  • 1145 Didnt receive enough information to verify debt (22%)
  • 687 Debt was result of identity theft (13%)
  • 421 Debt was paid (8%)
  • 323 Didnt receive notice of right to dispute (6%)

The top states complaints were filed from are:

  • 660 Complaints: TX
  • 583 Complaints: CA
  • 576 Complaints: FL
  • 420 Complaints: GA
  • 272 Complaints: NY
  • 193 Complaints: NC
  • 191 Complaints: IL
  • 176 Complaints: PA
  • 174 Complaints: MA
  • 154 Complaints: VA

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

  • 4132 Closed with explanation (79%)
  • 584 In progress (11%)
  • 435 Closed with non-monetary relief (8%)
  • 84 Untimely response (2%)
  • 28 Closed with monetary relief (1%)

This includes 5103 (97%) timely responses to complaints, and 160 (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.