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The FTC is seeking to recover $52.6 million from Billing ServicesGroup, but BSG denied the agency's charges, saying the FTC istargeting the wrong company. The FTC is seeking to recover theamount that the agency alleges the company billed consumers andfailed to refund, the agency announced Tuesday . The FTC accused BSG of cramming unauthorized charges on nearly 1.2million telephone lines on behalf of a serial crammer. Information in an FTC motion against BSG, filed in April in U.S.District Court for the Western District of Texas, comes from a 2010 investigation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation into Alternate Billing, a Minnesota company that was formerly aBSG client, BSG said in a statement . BSG defended itself by saying it provides legitimate third-partybilling services for telephone customers and vendors. AlternateBilling and related companies were among its customers from 2006 to2010, the FTC alleged. The FTC's motion "represents an incomplete and inaccuraterepresentation of the facts and leaps to false conclusions," BSGsaid in a statement. "Apparently, the FTC's view is that, becauseBSG settled litigation 13 years ago, BSG is liable for contemptwhenever a service provider is able to evade the compliancemeasures implemented by BSG, regardless of BSG's diligence and goodfaith. The bottom line is that the FTC is trying to blame BSG forthe acts of another party." No one answered the phone Tuesday afternoon at a phone numberassociated with Alternate Billing. The FBI investigation intoAlternate Billing is ongoing, according to a spokeswoman for theagency. BSG "cooperated fully" with the FBI investigation into AlternateBilling, BSG said in its statement. "To assert that BSG would havehad any unique insight into Alternate Billing's operations thatwould have led it to suspect cramming is ridiculous," the companysaid. The Charges The FTC alleged that BSG has violated the terms of a 1999settlement with the agency that prohibits unauthorized billing andbilling for vendors that fail to disclose the terms of theirservices. The charges were for so-called enhanced services, such asvoicemail and streaming video, that consumers never authorized, theFTC alleged. "BSG made it possible for con artists to steal people's hard-earnedmoney by placing charges on phone bills for services they neverordered or used," David Vladeck, director of the FTC's Bureau ofConsumer Protection, said in a statement. "Under previous federalcourt orders, BSG cannot profit from the fraud of others and thendeny responsibility for the harm they made possible." In its contempt motion, the FTC alleged that BSG failed toinvestigate the highly deceptive marketing for the services orwhether consumers even used them. BSG kept billing for theseservices despite "voluminous" complaints from consumers and evenafter some major telephone companies refused to do so, the FTCalleged in its motion. From 2006 through 2010, BSG billed consumers for nine crammed"enhanced services," including three voicemail services, onestreaming video service, two identity theft protection services,two directory assistance services, and one job skills trainingservice, the FTC alleged. BSG billed tens of thousands of consumers for voicemail boxes eachmonth from July 2009 through March 2010, but consumers used only209 mailboxes during that time, the FTC alleged. BSG also billedmore 250,000 consumers for a streaming video service, but only 23total movies were streamed, some of them by the crammers'employees, the agency alleged. BSG billed consumers more than $30 million for the voicemailservices and more than $12 million for the video service, the FTCalleged. Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S.government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter atGrantGross. Grant's e-mail address is grant_gross@idg.com. I am an expert from portable-data-terminals.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Portable Data Terminals , Rugged Tablet PCS, Portable Data Terminals,and more.
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