Telemarketers Fined $28.7M for Telemarketing Sales Rule Violation

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, ordered a telemarketing company and its owners to pay $28.7 million and permanently banned them from participating in or assisting in telemarketing. Day Pacer, EduTrek and the companies' owners, Raymond Fitzgerald, Ian Fitzgerald and David Cumming, "knowingly violated the Telemarketing Sales Rule," the FTC said in a news release Wednesday. The telemarketing scheme included unsolicited vocational and post-secondary education services to about 40 million consumers on the do not call registry. The order said Cumming "died after the parties had fully briefed summary judgment and his Estate has been substituted as a defendant."