Florida fines Direct Mortgage Group
By MortgageDaily.com staff
12/16/2005

Florida officials have taken legal action against a correspondent lender for telemarketing to prohibited phone numbers.

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services recently announced that it filed a lawsuit against Direct Mortgage Group Inc. for violating the state's "Do Not Call" law.

Despite numerous warning letters to Direct, the department said the Melbourne, Fla.-based company made at least 16 phone calls to Florida residents on the state's "Do Not Cal" list between January and October of 2005.

"Consumers who join the program are entitled to be spared the intrusion of commercial telemarketing calls, and we're committed to seeing that their privacy is protected," said department commissioner Charles Bronson in the statement. "We advised this company to stop calling numbers on the list, but they disregarded our warnings."

Direct could not immediately be reached for comment.

The lawsuit filed in the Brevard County Circuit Court seeks an injunction prohibiting Direct from any future calls to residents on the list and fines of up to $10,000 for each of the calls it made to prohibited numbers, according to the announcement.

The potential $160,000 fine Direct faces would add to the $1.5 million plus the department says it has collected or obtained in judgments against companies that have called residents on the "Do Not Call" list.

The legal action follows the department's lawsuit announced this summer against Majestic Mortgage LLC, Boca Raton, Fla., also for "Do Not Call" violations.

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