How A Texas Man Made $75K From Suing Telemarketers

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How many times have you heard that on the other end of the phone this week? This month? One Texas man said he got 24 spam calls and texts in a single day. But he doesn't shoo away the telemarketers right away, like most of us do. That's how he's made over $75,000 from these annoying calls.

Dan Graham, a financial accounting consultant, said it didn't make a difference that his phone number is on the National Do Not Call Registry. He still gets these calls multiple times a day from phone numbers selling insurance, auto warranties and student loan forgiveness, according to KXAN. He started to file complaints with the Better Business Bureau and Federal Trade Commission, but nothing changed.

"I started pushing back. I would stay on the line until I found the company behind it, then file a BBB complaint. I probably filed over two dozen BBB complaints and got nowhere, just more frustrated," Graham told KXAN.

Graham filed his first lawsuit in Travis County last April against a company that violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which restricts spam calls and the use of pre-recorded calls. Since filing his first lawsuit, he's claimed about 50 small claims. In collected about $75,000 in settlements, according to KXAN.

His lawsuits have caused about 10 companies to change the way they handle their telemarketing.

"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. 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 — more expensive to do that, then the benefit they receive from it," Graham said.