No Call law violators fined

ST. LOUIS -- Four more telemarketers have been fined a combined $50,000 for violating Missouri's No Call law, Attorney General Jay Nixon said Wednesday.

Two of the telemarketers had been fined previously, so their fines were doubled, Nixon said during a news conference in St. Louis. Overall, the attorney general's office has collected $580,000 from 69 different telemarketers since the law took effect July 1.

More than 965,000 residential phone numbers representing 2.5 million Missourians have been placed on the no-call list, Nixon said.

"Our tough enforcement actions have inspired many telemarketers to simply stop calling into Missouri anymore," he said.

Nixon said Colorado Prime Corp., based in New York, was fined $30,000 for marketing beef products. The company was fined $15,000 in July; and Spinnaker Development Corp. of Orlando, Fla., was fined $10,000 for marketing resort and travel packages. Spinnaker was fined $5,000 in September.

Colorado Prime vice president of operations Jack Crown said a technical glitch allowed for a small number of calls to people on Missouri's no-call list. "We immediately put the customers on our do-not-call list," Crown said. "It's far less than 1 percent, but it's still wrong."

Spinnaker officials did not return a phone call seeking comment.

Surrey Vacation Resorts of Branson, Mo., was fined $5,000 for marketing time share properties and vacation packages, and Capitol Mortgage Co. of Lenexa, Kan., was fined $5,000 for marketing mortgages.

Nixon also announced a lawsuit against Redden Enterprises of Grain Valley, Mo., for marketing purifier systems. The lawsuit, filed in Lafayette County, seeks a preliminary injunction preventing further violations of the No Call law.

Since the law took effect, the number of complaints to the attorney general's consumer protection hotline about telemarketing fraud has been cut in half, Nixon said. "This demonstrates to me that our law also is working to protect Missourians from con artists who use the phone for their scams."

Nixon said he was disappointed that the Legislature failed to close loopholes that still allow some telemarketing calls to people on the No Call list. Among the exemptions are those for telephone companies, which Nixon called the leading source of telemarketing complaints.