Texas man wins $75K suing telemarketers for illegal robo-calls

Every month Americans are bombarded by billions of anonymous robocalls, some in violation of federal laws that forbid contacting individuals who have registered their phone numbers in the National Do Not Call Registry.

One Austin-area man has leveraged this distinction to fight back in court against illicit robocallers to the tune of thousands of dollars, according to a new report from KXAN's Arezow Doost.

Dan Graham, a financial accountant who splits his time between Dallas and Austin, told Doost he's won $75,000 in court decisions since launching a protracted effort to find and sue the companies behind intrusive telemarketing calls.

"I probably get, in any given day, 10 [calls] on average," Graham told Doost. "I counted one day...I got 24 that day."

Hoping to cut down on the noise, Graham listed his number on the National Do Not Call Registry. When the calls persisted, he contacted the Better Business Bureau and Federal Trade Commission and filed complaints.

Per the FTC, "companies that illegally call numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry or place an illegal robocall can currently be fined up to $43,792 per call." With this in mind, Graham began to identify and file lawsuits against telemarketing firms who contacted him in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which states marketers "must obtain prior express written consent before robocalling" potential customers.

According to Doost, Graham has filed 50 lawsuits in small business court seeking redress over illegal robo-dialing. Many of his early attempts failed, but eventually, he began to win decisions that resulted in thousands of dollars in penalties for the offending companies.

"If people knew how to push back and started doing so, we could make this kind of endless spam unaffordable for the people who do it," Graham told Doost. "The hope is that there's enough of us who stand up, start pushing back, that it becomes more expensive for companies to negligently hire these telemarketers and participate in these telemarketing practices."