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A septic tank

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reached an agreement with the owners of a New Jersey-based septic tank cleaning supplies company over robocall violations. The owners of the company will pay a fine of $1.6 million, accept a permanent ban on telemarketing, and turn over a residential property.

The company is owned by three brothers named Carney. The Carney brothers initiated more than 45 million robocalls between January 2018 and March 2019. More than 30 million of those calls were to phone numbers on the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry. Initially the FTC sought more than $10 million in fines before negotiating the settlement with the Carney brothers.

This enforcement action demonstrates the importance of DNC compliance. But it also shows how, despite all the political saber rattling over the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the Facebook v. Duguid decision, the government has the means to regulate the truly bad actors in the telemarketing world outside of the TCPA’s not-always-fairly-applied system of class actions and litigation.