Honeypots.
Tens (hundreds?) of thousands of phone numbers owned by a single corporate subscriber.
They exist merely to monitor and track calling patterns. No one is using these phones. They are monitored autonomously for a host of reasons.
Most commonly companies like YouMail and Nomorobo will maintain vast honeypots to keep their app settings up to snuff, and also report perceived illegal activity to the ITG and FCC and other law enforcement agencies.
They are essentially the world’s biggest narcs– collecting data on calling practices and then turning companies over to the feds.
They do a lot of good work in bringing down bad guys, but they also net a number of good companies who are calling incorrect phone numbers.
And this brings me to the story of Melody Stoops.
You’ve heard me discuss her before.
She bought 80 cell phones. Sued Wells Fargo for calling her by mistake when it was trying to reach the previous owner of the phone.
I defended the case. Got it thrown out. You can’t manufacture your own harm.
Groundbreaking. World changing.
You remember all of that.
What you don’t remember– because I never told you– is that Nomorobo tried the same thing and lost on the very same grounds.
But instead of 80 cell phone numbers Nomorobo had about 10,000.
Well they’re back. And they’re going to try it again.
In a new TCPA suit filed in Federal Court in Connecticut Nomorobo just sued Synchrony Financial for 2,368 prerecorded calls made to Nomorobo’s honeypot numbers.
None of the calls were made with Nomorobo’s consent.
So IF Nomorobo has standing to sue, Synchrony will owe a cool $1MM to Nomorobo.
But that’s not all, of course.
Nomorobo has received BILLIONS of calls to its honeypot numbers I am certain. NONE of those calls are consented. And all of the calls made on a prerecorded basis are might be sued upon.
If this theory holds water Nomorobo just became one of the most valuable companies in the world based on book value– the value of the asset of TCPA claims against callers (at $500.00 per illegal call) is likely in the trillions of dollars.
Just. Insane.
And as I mentioned, Nomorobo is not alone. YouMail has a vast honeypot. Many other companies do also.
This is so incredibly fascinating and important.
You can read the full complaint here: Honeypot Complaint
We will keep a very close eye on this.
In fact I will probably discuss with Mike on Monday. So you DEFINITELY do not want to miss out!
Chat soon.
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Very interesting case! Can’t wait to see how it plays out. Some random observations…
Complaint claims approx. 290,000 honeypot phone numbers – yikes!
So considering the honeypot size, only 2,368 calls over 4 years is statistically miniscule (only 0.000005593 calls per phone per day). Now the potential statutory damages are relatively high ($1.184M pre-trebling) we all know they NEVER get anywhere the full award (if I’m wrong please correct me with a link to said results). So there’s that…
Real Q is if they are successful in this case will they stop there? They must have a boatload of other potential cases from said honeypot records…as you said potentially one of the most valuable cos based on book value 😉
Now I’m glad you brought up your (and yes, I’ll say it: your masterwork getting it dismissed – groundbreaking as it were – credit where credit’s due and all that…) Stoops v Wells Fargo* case…
Now way back in Dec 2024 (the 13th to be exact) I was perusing the PACER database** and according to them one Mr. Czar has represented one Wells Fargo 93 times (that’s ninety three, and yeah, I counted) now I can’t say if they were all TCPA cases; but given what we know about their choice of counsel chances are high they were, or at least a big %!
So while Stoops was admittedly, clearly, manufacturing cases it’s statistically very likely that WF was violating the TCPA on what seemed to be an ongoing basis – or were there 92 other plaintiffs ‘manufacturing’ cases also? Not likely.
*If ever there was a reason to completely ban a financial institution from said industry for blatant criminal activity WF would be the poster child. But wait hasn’t our Czar stated he won’t/doesn’t represent ‘scumbags’? I’m having a bit of trouble reconciling this but hey I guess one mans scumbag is another mans gravy train…
**I hoped someday I’d be able to bring that journey down the rabbit hole up – thanks Eric! But hey don’t shoot the messenger; this is all publicly available information:
Just Google ‘Wells Fargo Scandal’ (https://www.google.com/) & visit https://pacer.uscourts.gov/
This analysis is spot-on. I’m the first to complain when some scuzzy zombie debt collector uses recorded messages or predictive dialers on skip-traced numbers, but (based on those stats) I don’t think that’s what happened here. Synchrony probably thought they had consent for the calls but had some small percentage of erroneous records. It wasn’t smart to robocall these numbers without verifying them first, but it wasn’t criminal.
Stoops is one of those cases where neither party was probably operating with clean hands, and I don’t begrudge the Czar his big win. However, I don’t like seeing it misapplied to non-honeypot cases. I’ve written (in my book and on my blog) about the Konopca v. FDS Bank case in which a creditor robocalled a guy’s business cell 600 times for a debt that wasn’t his, ignoring multiple requests to stop, and then indignantly claimed it was the plaintiff’s fault for porting the number from a landline! Like who could have foreseen that he would be one of the 200 million people who would do that! Stoops shouldn’t have been a factor here, but it cast a pall over the case and probably led to a lower settlement.