Here's something telephone hotline psychic Miss Cleo should have seen coming, but didn't--a pair of lawsuits by Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon for alleged consumer fraud and 94 violations of the state's new telemarketing do-not-call list.
Named defendants in the suits, filed earlier this week in State Courts in St. Louis and Kansas City, were Access Resource Services of Ft. Lauderdale, FL, operators of the Miss Cleo telephone hotline that's heavily promoted on direct response television ads. Executives of the firms could not be reached for comment.
Nixon said in a statement that "Miss Cleo should have seen this coming."
Shortly after filing the lawsuits, Nixon won temporary orders from Judges Julian Bush in St. Louis and Peggy Stevens McGraw in Kansas City, restraining Access and Miss Cleo from further violations of the state’s Merchandising Practices and Telemarketing No-Call List Act pending the outcome of a trial that's expected to be held later in the year.
Nixon alleges in court papers in the Kansas City suit that Access, which is not licensed to do business in the state, billed Missouri residents, some of whom were dead, for calls to its toll-free Miss Cleo hotline while charging consumers for calls made by their under-age children without permission. He also alleged that the firm billed people for calls they never made since early April of this year in violation of the state's Merchandising Practices Act.
Further he alleges in the St. Louis lawsuit that Access made cold-telemarketing calls to 94 of the more than 614,000 Missourians listed on the state-operated telemarketing do-not-call list since last December 1 when the law creating the list went into effect.
The state, according to court papers, is seeking civil penalties of $5,000 per violation.
