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December 15, 2022: Capital One to Pay $2 Million to Settle Debt Collection Lawsuit
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Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced today that Capital One, N.A., will pay $2 million to settle a civil lawsuit alleging the company made unreasonably excessive calls to collect past due accounts.
“Repeated phone calls from debt collectors intended to annoy, abuse or harass consumers is illegal and wrong,” District Attorney Gascón said. “My office will continue to do what is best for consumers when companies violate state laws and take advantage of them.”
Under a judgment negotiated with the Delaware-headquartered company, entered yesterday in the Los Angeles County Superior Court and signed by Judge Gregory Keosian, Capital One was ordered to pay a total of $2 million.
- $1.45 million in civil penalties, $362,500 to each of the four District Attorney’s offices involved;
- $300,000 in investigative costs;
- $250,000 in restitution
Capital One, which did not admit wrongdoing, must implement and maintain policies and procedures to prevent harassing debt collection calls for four years after the judgment date. Among them: not make more than seven calls to an account in a consecutive seven-day period; stop all calls to accounts that don’t have a valid telephone number; and no longer call those who request verbally or in writing that they not be contacted.
Beginning in March 2015, Capital One made calls with unreasonably excessive frequency and persisted in calling wrong numbers in an effort to collect their debts, both in violation of California’s Rosenthal Act and the Federal Debt Collection Practices Act.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Consumer Protection Division led the investigation and prosecution as part of the Debt Collection Task Force, which includes San Diego, Santa Clara and Riverside county district attorney’s offices.
This is the third judgment obtained in the joint effort against debt collectors over the past several years.
In October 2018, the prosecution group secured a $9 million judgement against Allied Interstate, LLC and a $3.5 million judgment against Synchrony Bank last year.
