Ocwen TCPA Lawsuit Seeks End to Misdirected Debt Collection Calls

In a new Ocwen TCPA lawsuit, a New York man says Ocwen Loan Servicing violated federal communications law by calling him repeatedly and without his consent.

Plaintiff Joshua K. says defendant Ocwen Loan Servicing has been insistently calling his mobile phone number seeking a third party.

According to Joshua’s Ocwen TCPA lawsuit, Ocwen has been trying to reach someone named Leonard who used to own and live in Joshua’s apartment before losing it in a foreclosure.

Leonard apparently still owes money to Ocwen on the mortgage he took out on his now-foreclosed home, and Ocwen has been calling Joshua’s phone number in attempts to collect the debt from Leonard, according to Joshua.

These calls kept coming several times a day, Joshua alleges. During one such call, Joshua says, he asked the caller to stop calling his number.

The caller allegedly told Joshua he would need to submit a written request to Ocwen’s “Research Department.” Joshua says he submitted that written request to Ocwen.

But even after that, the calls allegedly kept coming. Joshua says he received dozens more calls attempting to collect some other person’s debt.

Joshua claims he never gave Ocwen any prior express permission to contact him using an automated telephone dialing system or prerecorded message.

According to his Owen TCPA lawsuit, he “has never had a relationship with Ocwen, has never authorized Ocwen to contact him via the use of an automatic telephone dialing system, or provided his phone number to Ocwen.”

Joshua says he could tell the calls were made using an automated telephone dialing system because of what he heard when he picked up. He says at first there was no love operator on the other end.

A representative answered Joshua only after a silence-filled delay, he says.

Unconsented Calls Lead to Ocwen TCPA Lawsuit

Joshua believes these unconsented robocalls from Ocwen are willful violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA.

According to Joshua’s Ocwen TCPA lawsuit, Congress enacted the TCPA in 1991 to curb the practice of using automatic telephone dialing systems to place massive amounts of uninvited marketing calls.

The act’s sponsor, Senator Hollings, described these phone calls as “the scourge of modern civilization.” Formal Congressional findings say that residential telephone customers considered these calls “a nuisance and an invasion of privacy.”

To the end of curbing these unwelcome calls, the TCPA allows recipients of certain unconsented calls placed using an automatic telephone dialing system to bring a civil action against the caller in federal court.

Later amendments to the TCPA and interpretations by the Federal Communications Commission applied prohibitions to calls placed to mobile phone numbers. Certain unconsented SMS text messaging is also prohibited.

The TCPA allows a successful plaintiff to collect statutory damages of $500 for each violation. Violations that were made knowingly or willfully may be subject to damage awards of three times that amount.

Since Ocwen’s phone calls were also an allegedly misguided attempt to collect a debt, Joshua is also bringing a claim under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. He is seeking an award of damages, court costs and attorneys’ fees, plus an injunction barring further unconsented robocalls from Ocwen.

The Ocwen TCPA Lawsuit is Case No. 1:16-cv-06532 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

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If you were contacted on your cell phone by a company via an unsolicited text message (text spam) or prerecorded voice message (robocall), you may be eligible for compensation under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

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