Washington State Attorney General Christine Gregorie is suing the operators of a Minnesota-based debt consolidation company for violating the state’s four-year old anti-spam law.
On Thursday, Gregorie filed suit in King County Superior Court, Seattle, against Samuel and Adman Meltzer and their companies, Chippynet.com and Mobydns.com, for allegedly sending thousands of unsolicited e-mails to Washington residents that falsely advertised their debt collection services.
The Meltzers could not be reached for comment Friday.
Besides alleging that the Meltzers falsely labeled the unsolicited e-mails as coming from the “Collections Department” or “Payment Department,” the suit also alleges that they used deceptive subject lines, such as “Urgent,” “Check Unclaimed” and “Payment Past Due” as a way of luring consumers to open and read their e-mails.
Gregory is seeking civil penalties of $500 for each deceptive e-mail sent to an individual plus $1,000 for every e-mail handled by an Internet Service Provider (ISP). She is also seeking an unspecified amount for the outage and alleged good will damage caused by the sending of deceptive and unsolicited commercial-emails through an ISP.
The Unsolicited Electronic Mail Act, banning deceptive and misleading subject lines and false sender information hiding the sender’s identity and address, was adopted in 1998.
This is Gregorie’s third lawsuit against a telemarketer for allegedly violating the state’s anti-spam law.
The first suit was filed in October 1988, four months after the law went into effect, against Jason Heckel and his Salem, OR-based company, Natural Instincts. It was dismissed in March of 2000 after Superior Court Judge Palmer Robinson voided the law saying that it violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
But a little more than a year later Robinson was reversed by the State Supreme Court and the suit was reinstated. It is now slated for trial in September.
The second suit, filed in 1999, against the owner of an Atlanta-based company, was settled for $30,000.
Network
