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0:16

This is Planet Money

0:18

from NPR.

0:21

Just

0:21

a quick warning. This episode contains

0:23

a phrase that might not be suitable

0:26

for kids.

0:27

Nathan Barton is the kind of guy

0:29

who likes to solve problems by tinkering

0:32

around. I'm an engineer by training.

0:34

And with engineering, if you just

0:36

start building things, measuring

0:38

things, paying attention to the outcome,

0:41

and then take that and

0:43

do better next time. Nathan used to design

0:45

microchips for ten x's instruments. But

0:48

he brings that same engineering vibe to

0:50

his new life as a stay at home dad

0:52

outside Portland, Oregon. If

0:54

he gets stuck

0:55

on a problem, he'll just keep working

0:57

on it and working on

0:58

it in his mind, breaking it down until

1:00

he can figure out how all the pieces

1:02

fit together. I'm kind of obsessive compulsive,

1:05

so I don't let go of things very

1:07

easily. A couple years ago, Nathan

1:09

turned his laser focus to a

1:11

problem that a lot of us have sadly become

1:14

intimately familiar with, telemarketing

1:17

phone calls. His kids had just

1:19

become teenagers. Nathan

1:21

had gotten them there for cellphones. But whenever

1:23

he'd actually try to call them to make

1:25

plans or ask what they want for dinner or whatever,

1:28

they wouldn't pick up the phone. I wanna

1:30

get on them that well, that's not the deal.

1:32

And then they say, well, I can't

1:35

leave the phone on because it rings a lot.

1:37

Nathan had gotten these kinds of calls before,

1:39

but it felt different now that his kids were

1:41

getting him too. They were going after his family

1:44

and where before he might have applied his

1:46

dogged engineering mind to designing

1:48

a better microchip. All of

1:50

a sudden, he had a new mission.

1:53

I felt like it was kind of my job

1:55

then to make the phone stop ringing. So

1:57

Nathan made the first obvious move.

2:00

He put his kid's numbers on the government's

2:02

do not call list. One that tells telemarketers,

2:04

do not call these people. But the calls

2:06

kept coming. The system was not

2:09

working the way it was supposed to. But Nathan

2:11

happened to know that the system offered regular

2:13

citizens a more powerful tool,

2:16

an obscure federal law

2:18

He'd used it once before to get this guy to stop

2:20

sending him junk faxes back when people

2:22

stole fax machines. But this law

2:24

was mostly aimed at unwanted phone

2:26

calls. It says you can sue a

2:28

telemarketer for five hundred

2:30

dollars every time they call you

2:32

illegally. And Nathan has kids,

2:34

they're getting like ten fifteen

2:36

calls a day. So Nathan thinks,

2:39

okay, well, I kind of have some time on my hands

2:41

these days. I'm gonna figure out how to

2:43

file a lawsuit and I'm gonna fix this

2:45

problem by taking these telemarketers to

2:48

court.

2:51

Hello,

2:54

and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Jeff Woe, and

2:56

I'm Alexia Horowitz Ghazi. When

2:58

we talk about regulation, we are

3:00

usually talking about something the

3:02

government does. The SEC

3:04

makes sure the financial industry follows

3:06

the rules. The EPA latches

3:08

out for polluters. But there are some

3:10

laws where the government wants everybody

3:13

to pitch in where most of the enforcement

3:15

comes from regular people like you

3:17

or me or Nathan. See

3:19

something? Sue something. Today

3:21

on the show, an experiment in

3:24

crowdsourcing justice. What

3:26

happens when the government hands over the

3:28

business of enforce in regulations to

3:31

Nathan. And what happens

3:33

to Nathan when the telemarketers strike

3:36

back?

3:44

Support for this podcast and the following

3:47

message come from NJM Insurance.

3:49

Did you know you could save up to twenty five percent

3:51

on your auto insurance with NJM? No

3:54

jingles or mascots? Just great insurance.

3:56

Get a quote at NJM dot com

3:59

slash podcast.

4:01

Hi. I'm Daniel Alarcon, host of NPR Spanish

4:03

language podcast. This season,

4:05

Superman flies to Chile for some real life

4:08

heroics. A very strange dog becomes

4:10

front page news in Peru. Mexican

4:12

activists infiltrate an Austrian museum to

4:14

tell the story of controversial artifact

4:16

and much much more. New episodes

4:18

every Tuesday starting September twentieth

4:20

available wherever you get your podcasts.

4:23

To

4:25

understand the legal system that

4:27

Nathan was diving into, you first

4:29

have to understand this one central question

4:31

at the heart of every law. That

4:34

question, who is going to enforce

4:36

this law? Like, let's say Congress

4:38

passes a law that says, as of

4:40

today, it is illegal for other

4:42

people's dogs to poop on

4:44

your lawn. Just saying it's

4:46

illegal will not be enough. The

4:48

law also needs to say who

4:50

is actually going to be possible for

4:53

bringing those poopy dogs to justice.

4:55

Congress could create a federal agency

4:58

like a national doggy doodoo

5:00

task force. I would be

5:02

honored to serve. I know you would.

5:04

And you could file a complaint to

5:06

this task force if you find dog poop on

5:08

your lawn. And they might send an

5:10

investigator to sniff out the wrongdoer

5:12

and take them to court or like

5:14

issue them a fine. But hiring all those

5:16

investigators would be super

5:18

expensive. And maybe it's

5:20

not worth it to spend millions of government

5:23

dollars fighting this minor nuisance.

5:25

So instead, Congress could say,

5:27

okay, you know what? We're gonna let everybody

5:30

enforce the law themselves. You

5:32

can find the person who let their dog

5:34

poop on your lawn, you can take them

5:36

to court, you can collect a fine

5:38

from them yourself. This is

5:40

called a private right of action.

5:43

Private rights of action are a

5:45

self enforcement mechanism. It

5:47

brings that many more cops to

5:49

the beat. Margo Saunders is

5:51

an attorney at the national consumer law

5:53

center. She says private rights of

5:55

action are at the center of a lot of consumer

5:57

protection laws. Including the one that

5:59

Nathan, the engineering dad in Portland,

6:01

was using, the telephone consumer

6:04

protection act, the TCPA. The

6:06

problem facing Congress back in nineteen

6:08

ninety one when the TCPA was passed

6:10

was a little like our dog poop example.

6:13

Telemarketers like lawn pooping

6:15

dogs were annoying. It was definitely a

6:17

problem, but there were so many

6:19

of them. And the harm was so

6:21

spread out that it seemed absurd

6:23

to hire a whole army of

6:25

telemarketing enforcers to track

6:27

them all down. So instead, Congress

6:30

decided to go the private right of

6:32

action route to turn all of

6:34

us into an army of telemarketing enforcers.

6:37

When Congress was passing this law in

6:39

ninety one, what did they envision was

6:41

gonna happen? Well,

6:42

I think they envision that

6:45

the individuals

6:46

who were received unwanted calls,

6:48

would be able to go into magistrates court,

6:51

small claims courts, and teach the callers

6:53

a lesson, and they would stop making the illegal

6:55

calls.

6:56

Congress said if you receive an illegal

6:58

telemarketing call, you can just take that

7:00

telemarketer to court and have them pay

7:02

you five hundred dollars. Meaning

7:04

it could cost these companies at least

7:07

that much for every unwanted

7:09

call. So the five hundred dollars is meant

7:11

to be a

7:13

penalty. It is meant to

7:15

incentivize callers

7:17

to comply with

7:18

the law. And if this sounds like

7:21

private years on the high seas or, you

7:23

know, rewards posters in the Wild West,

7:25

that is not a coincidence. These

7:27

systems of private enforcement go back

7:29

centuries. In medieval times,

7:31

if somebody was poaching the duke's

7:33

foxes, the duke would just post a

7:35

bounty in whoever hot, the bad

7:37

guy got the reward. Here you. Here you.

7:39

And that that was just how

7:42

law enforcement worked. So when

7:44

Congress came up with the plan for the TCPA,

7:46

they were drawing on a time honored

7:48

tradition. They were just deputizing the

7:51

whole country into this law enforcement scheme.

7:53

And Congress really did seem to think it would

7:55

be easy for people to enforce this

7:57

law themselves. That people could

7:59

just walk down to their local small claims

8:01

court file a lawsuit and

8:03

get their money. But Margaret says in practice,

8:06

that's not what happened at all. For most

8:08

people, these lawsuits are a lot harder to

8:10

pull off than Congress imagined. I

8:12

would not recommend people filing

8:14

their own cases. It's

8:17

I

8:17

mean, they welcome to do it. They have

8:19

that

8:19

right. But it's hard to bring these cases,

8:21

they're complex. Back in twenty twenty,

8:24

when Nathan, the dad from Portland was first

8:26

looking into the TCPA to get telemarketers

8:28

to stop calling his kids, he

8:30

did not have Margo advising him.

8:32

Instead, he went to YouTube. You

8:35

know if you make one phone call illegally?

8:37

Five hundred bucks. You have to pay you five hundred bucks.

8:39

That can trip up to fifteen hundred dollars

8:41

real money. See, this is just math. This is

8:43

this is how numbers work. All claims

8:45

court, you do not need an attorney. Good

8:47

luck. Go get them. I know you hate

8:49

them. I know you do well. Nathan

8:52

finds this whole community of people explaining

8:54

not just the TCPA, but

8:56

also how to get telemarketers to maybe

8:58

stop calling you altogether. They

9:00

say the industry keeps lists of

9:02

people who like to sue them. So

9:04

I thought I'll file a lawsuit or

9:06

two, and then that'll be that, and the calls

9:09

will stop. He wanted to get on the real

9:11

blacklist. I wanted to get on the real blacklist.

9:13

But before Nathan goes on his quest

9:15

to silence the telemarketers, he

9:17

lays out some ground rules for himself.

9:20

One, he's only going to do this in his

9:22

spare time. Two,

9:24

if he makes any money, it's going to go

9:26

toward family stuff. And

9:28

three. Am I able to use the word a

9:30

hole on the podcast? Oh,

9:32

yeah. Okay. So I have a no

9:34

a hole rule. Even

9:36

if they're in the wrong, I'm

9:38

not gonna sue a real charity. I'm

9:41

not gonna sue a

9:43

hospital. I'm only gonna sue

9:45

people who are a holes. Nathan

9:47

thinks, okay, I'm gonna

9:49

find those a holes, file a

9:51

few lawsuits, show them I'm a real threat, and

9:53

then they'll put me on that secret blacklist.

9:56

So starting in the summer of twenty twenty, when

9:58

Nathan notices of his family's phones

9:59

ringing with some number he doesn't

10:02

recognize? He answers it. And

10:04

he gets to work. Sometimes,

10:06

the people on the other line are

10:08

straight up scammers. There are people trying to

10:10

steal his bank info or something.

10:12

Those calls are illegal too, but

10:14

Nathan's not looking to take on an entire

10:16

international crime ring. That's like way too

10:18

much work. Nathan's going after

10:20

actual telemarketers. The ones trying

10:22

to sell them something. The ones with real

10:24

business addresses in the US. But

10:26

the telemarketers who are making

10:28

illegal calls they aren't making it

10:30

easy for Nathan to track them

10:32

down. They won't even tell him what company

10:34

they're with or at least not at

10:36

first. The process could start with a

10:38

robocall. That's like press

10:40

one if you're interested in saving money

10:42

on car insurance. Your robo

10:44

insurance man is is uncanny.

10:47

Well, of course, if you say no, they're just

10:49

gonna hang up on you. You don't have a

10:51

name. You don't know who did it. Right? But if

10:53

Nathan does press one, if he pretends to

10:55

be interested in buying car insurance,

10:57

they might transfer him to a

10:59

real person. A live

11:01

agent who would screen him again,

11:03

testing him to see if he's a real

11:05

customer. For Nathan, this

11:07

starts to feel like a game It's

11:09

like he's turning the tables on the telemarketers.

11:12

Now he is the one trying to keep

11:14

them on the line, trying to sweet

11:16

talk them, trying to get to the next

11:18

level. Sometimes, you'll go

11:20

through an agent or two,

11:22

and then they'll transfer you to a name

11:24

that you know.

11:25

So then you're like, oh,

11:27

Big

11:27

company X is the one who's actually

11:29

behind us. Sometimes the only way

11:31

to gain their trust is to give out

11:34

personal information. Nathan's told people

11:36

his real name, his address, his

11:38

Social Security number, he even

11:40

bought and returned an entire vacation

11:42

package just to get that company's information.

11:45

Over time, Nathan gets better and better

11:47

at the game at convincing mysterious

11:50

telemarketers to divulge who

11:52

they work for. If they've come to have

11:54

reason to think, hey, this guy might be a

11:56

paying customer, then

11:58

you can maybe drop a

11:59

little, like, well, can I see

12:02

a website And

12:04

when they crack, that does

12:06

feel good. But just having

12:08

the name of a company wasn't

12:10

enough. Nathan still had to figure out how to

12:12

file a lawsuit. I went down to

12:14

the local court clerk, and I

12:16

just asked for paperwork. How

12:18

do I start a lawsuit? And

12:20

they had these forms that you

12:22

could just literally fill out

12:24

or handwrite. Nathan could have

12:26

hired a lawyer to do all of this. But when

12:28

he crunch the numbers, he realized that

12:30

just a few hours of a lawyer's time

12:32

might cost more than one of

12:34

these cases would be worth. Tope he

12:36

decided to do it all himself. Like,

12:38

I have a lot of green. I would never do a

12:40

lawsuit by myself.

12:43

I I

12:43

don't know what to tell you. Maybe

12:45

I

12:45

shouldn't either. Like, I've

12:48

literally done everything wrong before I

12:50

figured out doing it right. Once

12:52

again, Nathan goes to the

12:54

Internet. Why Google summons

12:56

didn't really see anything. I

12:58

asked the court clerk. Okay. Okay. What's

13:01

a summons? It just has your name, it

13:03

has the name of the core,

13:05

what what what what. Right?

13:06

So I'm like, oh, okay. I

13:08

just went home and made one. Nathan says

13:11

he found out a few months later that his

13:13

summons letters were kinda janky.

13:15

Like, there's actually an official form

13:17

letter he was supposed to use. I don't opposing

13:19

attorneys thought when they saw something that

13:21

I just typed up. The lawsuits

13:23

that Nathan was filing and sending off,

13:25

they were pretty simple. You

13:27

know, under the Telephone Consumer

13:29

Protection Act, this company called me

13:31

illegally five times. So

13:33

they owe me five times five hundred

13:35

dollars. As soon as he sends out a few

13:37

of these summons, he starts getting

13:39

some very different calls on his phone

13:42

from lawyers wanting to settle out

13:44

a court,

13:44

The lawyer said, if you sign

13:47

this NDA and go away,

13:49

we'll cut you a check for a few thousand

13:51

dollars. Which was enough money that

13:53

Nathan would say, sure. Hand

13:55

it over and I won't tell a couple of

13:57

nosy journalists any legally

13:59

sensitive

13:59

specifics. They weren't amounts that

14:02

run around the neighborhood and

14:04

be like, wow, look what I did. Right?

14:06

Now, later, I have

14:08

settled maybe for some larger

14:10

amounts but the first amounts were

14:12

not particularly noteworthy in my

14:14

opinion. But still, like, it's it's

14:16

money. It's like it's a win. That's gotta

14:18

feel satisfying? Yeah.

14:21

I mean, it feels satisfying

14:23

in that you think you're making your

14:25

life better. Right? You think

14:27

that, okay, I settled. I'm

14:30

on my way to getting less calls. This

14:32

is what I wanted to do. And, yeah,

14:35

the next vacation's gonna be a little sweeter.

14:38

So Nathan's plan seemed to be

14:40

working. He was

14:40

making some money, and more importantly,

14:43

he was sending a message these

14:45

companies. Put me and my kids

14:47

on the real do not call list

14:49

or suffer the legal consequences.

14:51

But the calls kept coming.

14:54

Like Nathan even got a call

14:56

while we were talking to him.

14:57

I mean,

14:58

recorded line. Hi.

15:00

I was talking about the property owner. Right

15:03

away, Nathan starts doing what he always does.

15:05

Trying to fair information out of this guy.

15:07

I'm with Ryan real estate, RIAN0

15:11

out of Portland. Right?

15:15

Yes, sir. That's why originally, out of yeah.

15:18

Corporate office in Dallas, Texas

15:20

now. Ethan says please do

15:22

not call me again and he hangs

15:24

up. It sounded like you

15:26

recognized like you recognized

15:28

that name. Because I thought you had had a

15:30

lawsuit against some

15:33

Ryan group. There's a

15:35

piece of paper that says, I cannot answer

15:37

that question. Interesting. But

15:40

on a completely unrelated

15:43

topic, you know, some

15:45

companies don't learn from

15:47

history. That's that is true.

15:49

Now the question you should be asking

15:51

is, have I ever sued a

15:53

company three times? Have you ever sued

15:55

a company three times? Yeah,

15:57

they called, got sued,

16:00

called,

16:00

got sued, and

16:03

then I notified them on the

16:05

third one, and they they paid out

16:07

without it being filed. Nathan

16:09

says maybe one out of a hundred calls

16:11

he's able to trace back to an actual

16:13

company that he can sue. He gets into

16:15

a group. He's spending about ten hours a week

16:18

investigating telemarketers, filing

16:20

lawsuits, negotiating with lawyers,

16:22

and collecting checks. Nathan

16:24

wouldn't tell us how much money he's made from

16:26

all these lawsuits. He says a lot of that

16:28

information is tied up in the NDAs.

16:30

But let's just do some back of the

16:32

envelope math here. He's fired off more

16:34

than, like, two dozen lawsuits.

16:36

And if each lawsuit is worth a few

16:38

thousand bucks and a couple of them are

16:40

worth a lot more, You could be

16:42

pulling in six figures. Six

16:44

figures. And that's not that unusual.

16:46

We talked to another guy who said he's made a

16:48

hundred twenty thousand dollars off of

16:50

suing telemarketers. It paid for

16:52

his NBA. Then get this,

16:54

he even used the leftover money to

16:56

buy a bar. It's

16:58

called the wrong number bar. You know,

17:00

because of all those telemarketers? They called

17:02

the wrong number. Waugh.

17:04

Over time though, Nathan

17:07

realizes that not all of

17:09

these telemarketers are easy pickings.

17:11

Some of them, instead of offering him settlement

17:13

checks, they fight back. And we're

17:15

not talking small claims court anymore

17:17

or even state court. They take them to

17:19

federal court. These are the big leagues,

17:21

legally speaking. Well, that technically. Anyway,

17:23

the telemarketers say when you pressed one

17:25

for more information when we first reached

17:27

out to you, That was

17:30

consent. Or they would say, we

17:32

only have your number because you entered

17:34

it in on some form on the Internet

17:36

asking us to call you. And now

17:38

you're suing us after basically

17:40

begging us to call you, that

17:42

is fraud. That's basically what a

17:44

telemarketer argued in one of Nathan's cases

17:46

from last year. That Nathan bated

17:48

their calls. They were also like, your

17:50

honor, this guy is not a real

17:52

victim. He's a gifter. Look at all these

17:54

other lawsuits he's filed against

17:56

honest hard working phone sales professionals.

17:58

And this telemarketer convinced the

18:00

judge that Nathan's case was so

18:03

frivolous that Nathan should have

18:05

to pay their legal fees. How

18:07

much money did they ask for?

18:08

Well, they asked for, like, a hundred

18:11

and sixty thousand dollars. What?

18:13

That's what everybody that's what everybody's

18:15

reaction was. We reached

18:17

out to the

18:18

telemarketers on the other side of the case through

18:21

their lawyers they declined to

18:23

comment.

18:26

After the break,

18:27

what does this ruling mean

18:28

for Nathan's bottom online,

18:30

and for the system of crowdsource justice

18:33

that depends

18:33

on people like Nathan to

18:35

enforce the law.

18:47

Okay. Planet

18:48

Money listeners, we asked for your favorite

18:51

or least favorite parts of the US tax

18:53

code and a surprising number

18:55

of you. My favorite part

18:56

of the tax code box. By

18:58

the least favorite part of the tax code. One of my

19:00

two favorite parts of the tax code. Section

19:02

five twenty nine four fifteen seventy

19:04

5021 dot 162

19:07

dash twenty two. A bunch

19:08

of tax loopholes we could not fit into

19:10

our regular episode of the show. That's

19:12

in our most recent bonus episode

19:15

for Planet Money Plus listeners. If

19:17

that's not you, it could be. Check out the link

19:19

in our episode notes.

19:22

If you like

19:24

Nate and start getting into suing

19:26

telemarketing companies using the TCPA,

19:29

it's probably only a matter of

19:31

time before you will encounter this

19:33

guy. My name is Eric I'm

19:35

the czar of the TCPA. That

19:37

is not an official title, but Eric

19:39

is a big deal in the telemarketing

19:42

world. Use one of the go to defense

19:44

lawyers for companies that have been hit with

19:46

a TCPA lawsuit. To

19:48

Eric, this law is all

19:50

kinds of broken. For one, Eric says the

19:52

people suing telemarketers, they're

19:54

not all upstanding honest

19:56

citizens. You know, there's instances

19:59

where someone might go off and

19:59

and buy eighty cell phones

20:02

just so they can collect wrong number

20:04

of calls. And there's there's a ton

20:06

of that. And there's instances of

20:09

of people filling out forms online and then pretending

20:11

that, hey, it wasn't me, it was somebody else.

20:13

Maybe eighty is a bit of an exaggeration.

20:16

But Eric did defend a case where a woman kept like

20:18

thirty cellphones in a shoe box, just

20:20

to file TCPA lawsuits. She even

20:22

described that as her business.

20:24

Barrick argues people making a living

20:27

bringing these lawsuits was never

20:29

the point of the TCPA. And

20:31

some judges agree. They're starting to punish people

20:33

who they think are abusing the law.

20:36

The courts don't like to think that

20:38

somebody is inviting calls

20:40

and then turning around and suing for them.

20:42

And some defendants are are pushing

20:45

very, very hard to make sure that the

20:47

people who are inventing these lawsuits are gonna pay

20:49

for it. But Eric says in the grand

20:51

scheme of things, individuals like

20:53

Nathan are small fry. The

20:55

real problem is the way the TCPA allows

20:58

these giant class actions, where

21:00

someone brings a lawsuit not only on

21:02

behalf of one client, but on behalf

21:04

of all the people that a company

21:06

has ever illegally dialed. Think about

21:08

that. Five hundred dollars

21:09

a call multiplied by

21:12

millions of calls and I'm

21:14

talking right eight figure settlement,

21:16

tens of millions of dollars.

21:18

That is how

21:20

insane these statues are. Back

21:22

in the twenty tens, there was a huge

21:24

wave of class action lawsuits against big

21:27

household name companies. And Eric

21:29

represented a lot of them. What were

21:31

some of the companies

21:33

that got tangled up in these settlements?

21:37

Every single bank and

21:39

finance company you can think of.

21:41

The largest on record until just last

21:43

year with Capital One, they had a

21:45

seventy five million dollar

21:48

settlement. It seems like those big

21:50

lawsuits made a difference. They kind of freaked everybody

21:52

out. And so in the past few years,

21:54

companies, at least the big

21:56

legitimate ones, have become a

21:58

lot more careful about following

21:59

the law. Isn't that a positive

22:02

thing? Well, I mean,

22:04

look, the way I look at it, that's like saying, you

22:06

know, if you want someone to behave, you

22:08

just put a gun to their head and

22:10

stay behaved. Right? Well well well

22:12

yeah, but there's other ways to

22:14

do it. Eric

22:14

says, come on, this can't be what Congress

22:17

really intended. All these plaintiffs

22:19

attorneys jenning up massive lawsuits

22:21

in the name of people who maybe didn't even

22:23

care about these telemarketing calls in the

22:26

first place. And we're gonna take you for ten billion

22:28

dollars. And when it puts you out of business,

22:30

unless you pay me twenty million bucks.

22:32

Right? It it's absolute extortion

22:35

at the highest level. And so, you know,

22:37

does it create incentives

22:39

to comply? Yes, it does. No

22:41

no question. Yes, it does. But

22:44

you could create that same incentive

22:47

without this really heavy

22:49

handed remedy

22:51

that that just it threatens to put American businesses out

22:54

of business over what over nothing,

22:56

you know, comparatively over

22:58

nothing. And Eric says

22:59

these big lawsuits could actually have

23:02

made the spam call problem even worse than

23:04

before. They may have

23:06

discouraged big public facing companies from

23:08

using illegal telemarketing but

23:10

a lot telemarketing outfits are still willing

23:12

to bend the law. And these

23:14

bad actors have gotten way more

23:17

sophisticated at hiding their

23:19

identities and tricking people into

23:21

giving their consent to get even

23:23

more phone calls. And lately,

23:25

they've added one more move. Going

23:27

after the people who sue them, taking

23:29

them to court for fraud. As

23:31

I often say, it's not for someone who's green

23:33

of horn. You can't just walk

23:36

into this environment and expect to survive,

23:39

you'll get eaten alive on both

23:40

sides.

23:41

The TCPA has turned telemarketing enforcement

23:44

into a kind of market.

23:46

Like, instead of having a central government

23:48

agency deciding this is how

23:50

much law enforcement we're gonna have, The

23:52

amount of enforcement goes up or down depending

23:54

on the incentives. How

23:56

easy is it to hunt down a company making

23:59

illegal calls? How

24:01

much does it cost to bring them to

24:03

justice? Can you find efficiencies of

24:05

scale by bringing lawsuits on behalf

24:07

of millions of people all

24:09

at once? And of course, as with any enforcement

24:11

regime, the law breakers are also

24:13

weighing their costs and benefits.

24:15

Telemarketing is a

24:17

multibillion dollar business. How

24:19

much can a telemarketer make on each

24:21

call? How much financial risk is

24:23

worth taking on to sell some vacation

24:25

packages over the phone? And so when you're

24:27

thinking about the world that we are living

24:29

in, where your phone rings five times a

24:31

day with calls from potential spam,

24:34

That is the equilibrium that this

24:37

market has found, the result of

24:39

all these different incentives playing

24:41

off of each other. And

24:42

if you look at it that way, the reason for

24:44

this ongoing spamocalypse, maybe

24:46

it's just a problem with the incentives.

24:49

Right now, it doesn't make financial sense

24:52

for most people to spend the

24:54

time and money to file these

24:56

lawsuits. As for the people who are

24:58

filing these lawsuits their own, like

25:00

Nathan, there are things besides the

25:02

money motivating them. There's a sense

25:04

of indignation of not wanting these

25:06

companies to get away with it. And a sense of

25:08

duty that by filing these lawsuits,

25:10

the rest of us might eventually get

25:12

fewer unwanted calls. A lot of

25:14

things as a good citizen you

25:16

do not because you're gonna

25:18

get money back in your pocket,

25:20

but because that's what a good citizen

25:22

does. In

25:23

the end, Nathan did not have to pay the hundred

25:26

sixty thousand dollars to those

25:28

telemarketers. He finally hired a

25:30

lawyer, the judge knocked it down to forty

25:32

thousand dollars, And

25:34

now Nathan is appealing everything.

25:36

He thinks there's nothing wrong with

25:38

using the TCPA to file a lot

25:40

of lawsuits against telemarketers if

25:42

telemarketers refused to stop calling

25:44

him. Nathan says

25:45

the calls have slowed down a bit.

25:47

He's getting about half as many as before.

25:50

And

25:50

he's still holding on to this dream that he started out

25:53

with. I see

25:54

a future where I

25:56

can

25:56

have a nap with my phone

25:59

on. And the phone doesn't ring.

26:01

And that I can call

26:03

my kids and the phone

26:06

rings and they answer it.

26:08

After

26:08

all, Nathan says, that's what the law was

26:10

supposed to do in the first place.

26:18

Are you using an obscure law

26:20

to take on a shadowy industry?

26:22

Tell us about it. You can email us at

26:24

planet money at NPR dot org or find us

26:26

on all things social at planet money. One

26:28

more thing, you may have heard planet money

26:30

started a record label to put

26:32

out a song. That song is called

26:35

Inflation. It's sung by Ernest

26:37

Jackson and Sugar Daddy in the gumbo

26:39

rue, stream it and download it wherever

26:41

you listen to music. This episode was produced

26:43

by Willa Rubin with help from Nikki

26:45

Willett. It was edited by Keith Broomer,

26:47

fact checked by Sarah Juarez and

26:49

engineered by Gilly Moon with help from

26:51

Robert Rodriguez. Special thanks to

26:53

Christopher Shella and Anthony Peronik

26:55

and to Omar Khoury, the guy who bought

26:57

a bar with the proceeds from his telemarketing

27:00

Omar says he's been in touch with Eric

27:02

Troutman, the defense attorney, and he

27:04

might even name a drink after Eric. It'll

27:06

be called the czar.

27:09

I'm Alexia Horowitz Cozzie, and I'm Jeff Glow.

27:11

This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

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