WASHINGTON — The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reporting that it has taken action in stopping three Montreal-based telemarketing operations that “allegedly bilked millions of dollars” from small businesses and other organizations by charging them for unwanted listings in online “Yellow Pages” directories.
“Businesses and other organizations should train their staff to hang up on cold calls about business directory services,” said Jessica Rich, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Report them to the FTC. We can pursue these cases even if the scammers hide in another country.”
At the request of the FTC and the Office of the Florida Attorney General, federal judges in Florida temporarily halted and froze the assets of National Business Advertising and Your Yellow Pages, the FTC explains. In an another case in Washington state, a federal judge temporarily halted the operations of OnlineYellowPagesToday.com.
“In all three cases, the government seeks to permanently stop the illegal practices and make the defendants return victims’ money,” the FTC reports.
In a fourth case this past November, a federal judge entered a $15.6 million judgment against the defendants involved with Online Public Yellow Pages, and banned them from the directory business, FTC adds.
According to the FTC, these telemarketing groups allegedly sent “deceptive invoices” to small businesses around the United States for “unordered business directory listings.” When recipients attempted to dispute the charges, audio recordings were played in an attempt to prove that employees authorized the listings. However, according to these businesses, the recordings sounded altered to sound as if an employee verified the contact information during a previous call “without agreeing to new services.”
Many of these organizations or small businesses then paid the telemarketers to avoid “damaging collection actions” and to end the harrassment, the FTC explains.
The FTC reports that the charges for these telemarketing groups are “for misrepresenting that they had a pre-existing business relationship with consumers, the consumers had agreed to buy directory listings, and that consumers owed them money.”
To learn more about directory scams, visit http://business.ftc.gov/documents/0512-small-business-scams.
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