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Quick analysis: Halloween Treat: Lawsuits Continue Slide

For the second month is a row, TCPA, FDCPA and FCRA lawsuits were all down from the previous month. While the September drop was steeper, October’s continued slide was nothing to boo at with TCPA down -2.2%, FDCPA down -7.2% and even FCRA down by -9.2%. Unlike September, October’s CFPB complaints rose a bit, +2.8% over the previous month.

YTD looked pretty similar, with FCRA (+4.3%) being the only statute still up over 2021. TCPA (-14.2%) and FDCPA (-30%) are both down quite a bit, and CFPB complaints are also down by -16.7% from 2021.

In other news, putative class actions represented 11.7% of FDCPA, 47% of TCPA and 1.7% of FCRA lawsuits filed last month. About 45% of all plaintiffs who filed suit last month had filed at least once before. And finally, Minnesota attorney Catrina Eom Smith continued her dominance of this list for representing the most consumers in October (30) while Florida attorney Jibrael S Hindi has still represented the most consumers for the year so far (232).

Current Month: Previous Month: Previous
Year:		 Year to Date: Year to
Date Comp:
Oct 01, 2022
Oct 31, 2022		 Sep 01, 2022
Sep 30, 2022		 Oct 01, 2021
Oct 31, 2021		 Jan 01, 2022
Oct 31, 2022		 Jan 01, 2021
Oct 31, 2021
CFPB  4705 4578 2.8% 5824 -19.2% 51017 61224 -16.7%
FDCPA  283 305 -7.2% 611 -53.7% 3960 5654 -30.0%
FCRA  422 465 -9.2% 474 -11.0% 4735 4541 4.3%
TCPA  132 135 -2.2% 117 12.8% 1297 1512 -14.2%

 

Complaint Statistics:

4705 consumers filed CFPB complaints, and about 724 consumers filed lawsuits under consumer statutes from Oct 01, 2022 to Oct 31, 2022.

  • 4705 CFPB Complaints
  • 283 FDCPA, 33 Class Action (11.7%)
  • 132 TCPA, 62 Class Action (47.0%)
  • 422 FCRA, 7 Class Action (1.7%)

Litigation Summary (scroll down for CFPB data):

  • Of those cases, there were about 724 unique plaintiffs (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit).
  • Of those plaintiffs, about 324, or (45%), had sued under consumer statutes before.
  • Combined, those plaintiffs have filed about 2655 lawsuits since 2001
  • Actions were filed in 140 different US District Court branches.
  • About 546 different collection firms and creditors were sued.

The top courts where lawsuits were filed:

  • 65 Lawsuits: Minnesota District Court – Dmn
  • 38 Lawsuits: Georgia Northern District Court – Atlanta
  • 30 Lawsuits: Illinois Northern District Court – Chicago
  • 29 Lawsuits: Florida Middle District Court – Tampa
  • 26 Lawsuits: California Central District Court – Western Division – Los Angeles
  • 24 Lawsuits: Nevada District Court – Las Vegas
  • 24 Lawsuits: Pennsylvania Eastern District Court – Philadelphia
  • 22 Lawsuits: Florida Middle District Court – Orlando
  • 17 Lawsuits: Florida Southern District Court – Fort Lauderdale
  • 17 Lawsuits: Texas Northern District Court – Dallas

The most active consumer attorneys were:

  • Representing 30 Consumers: CATRINA EOM SMITH
  • Representing 15 Consumers: TIMOTHY S ANDERSON
  • Representing 12 Consumers: GEORGE HAINES
  • Representing 12 Consumers: MATTHEW THOMAS BERRY
  • Representing 12 Consumers: GERARDO AVALOS
  • Representing 11 Consumers: THOMAS J LYONS
  • Representing 9 Consumers: JEFFREY SAND
  • Representing 8 Consumers: SIOBHAN MCGREAL
  • Representing 8 Consumers: DAVID H KRIEGER
  • Representing 8 Consumers: JOHN THOMAS STEINKAMP

Statistics Year to Date:
9189 total lawsuits for 2022, including:

  • 3960 FDCPA
  • 4735 FCRA
  • 1297 TCPA

Number of Unique Plaintiffs for 2022: 8109 (including multiple plaintiffs in one suit)

The most active consumer attorneys of the year:

  • Representing 232 Consumers: JIBRAEL JARALLAH SAID HINDI
  • Representing 202 Consumers: MATTHEW THOMAS BERRY
  • Representing 201 Consumers: THOMAS JOHN PATTI
  • Representing 140 Consumers: CRAIG CARLEY MARCHIANDO
  • Representing 131 Consumers: LEONARD ANTHONY BENNETT
  • Representing 126 Consumers: MICHAEL FREDERICK CARDOZA
  • Representing 122 Consumers: CHRISTOPHER NEIL ARMOR
  • Representing 119 Consumers: SYED HASEEB HUSSAIN
  • Representing 118 Consumers: DREW DAVID SARRETT
  • Representing 105 Consumers: NATHAN CHARLES VOLHEIM

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

There were 4705 complaints filed against debt collectors from Oct 01, 2022 to Oct 31, 2022.

Total number of debt collectors complained about: 775

The types of debt behind the complaints were:

  • 1426 Other debt (30%)
  • 1141 Credit card debt (24%)
  • 972 I do not know (21%)
  • 678 Medical debt (14%)
  • 240 Auto debt (5%)
  • 100 Payday loan debt (2%)
  • 90 Mortgage debt (2%)
  • 35 Private student loan debt (1%)
  • 23 Federal student loan debt (0%)

Here is a breakdown of complaints:

  • 2468 Attempts to collect debt not owed (52%)
  • 847 Written notification about debt (18%)
  • 499 Took or threatened to take negative or legal action (11%)
  • 430 False statements or representation (9%)
  • 373 Communication tactics (8%)
  • 88 Threatened to contact someone or share information improperly (2%)

The top five subissues were:

  • 1249 Debt is not yours (27%)
  • 763 Debt was result of identity theft (16%)
  • 533 Didnt receive enough information to verify debt (11%)
  • 382 Debt was paid (8%)
  • 323 Attempted to collect wrong amount (7%)

The top states complaints were filed from are:

  • 621 Complaints: FL
  • 523 Complaints: TX
  • 420 Complaints: CA
  • 370 Complaints: GA
  • 196 Complaints: NC
  • 187 Complaints: NY
  • 168 Complaints: MI
  • 167 Complaints: PA
  • 159 Complaints: IL
  • 154 Complaints: NJ

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

  • 3539 Closed with explanation (75%)
  • 699 In progress (15%)
  • 398 Closed with non-monetary relief (8%)
  • 50 Untimely response (1%)
  • 19 Closed with monetary relief (0%)

This includes 4574 (97%) timely responses to complaints, and 131 (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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