At the request of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal district court has entered orders settling charges against three telemarketers who allegedly duped consumers, most of whom were elderly, into buying grossly overpriced household products such as garbage bags and light bulbs.
Named as defendants were George Thomas, Joshua Abramson and Bruce Peeples, according to the FTC.
The orders also contain a $13.4 million judgment against each individual defendant, representing the total amount of harm caused to consumers over the past three years, continued the Commission.
Most of this amount has been suspended based on defendants’ inability to pay, but each defendant must surrender his right to assets already frozen by the court – $33,290 for Peeples, $29,448 for Abramson and $2,380 for Thomas, according to the FTC.
The FTC alleged that the telemarketers falsely claimed that the proceeds from the sales would be used to benefit handicapped and disabled individuals.
According to the FTC, the defendants harassed some consumers into buying these products, charged consumers’ credit and debit cards, debited their bank accounts without the consumers’ authorizations, and called consumers who either had registered their telephone numbers on the FTC’s National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry or had previously told the defendants that they did not want to be called again.
The settlements prohibit defendants Thomas, Abramson, and Peeples from making deceptive and misleading statements in violation of the FTC Act, and from violating the Unordered Merchandise Statute, which prohibits mailing products to, or billing consumers for, products that they did not agree to purchase, according to the FTC.
The orders also hold the defendants jointly liable for a judgment of more than $13 million, the majority of which has been suspended due to their inability to pay, according to the Commission.
Abramson and Thomas also are barred from violating the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), and Peeples is permanently barred from telemarketing. These settlements end the FTC’s case against Handicapped & Disabled Workshops, Inc., Handi-Hope Industries, Inc., and Handi-Ship LLC, and their principals Peeples and Abramson, and manager Thomas, according to the Commission.
This case is on file at the U.S. District Court in Arizona in Phoenix.
