There’s a been a lot of talk recently about “inbound leads” in the TCPA world.

As I discussed at contact.io, however, inbound leads pose two significant problems. First, most (but not all) so-called “inbound leads” are actually outbound-to-inbound–meaning somebody first initiated an outbound call or text to the consumer that generated the inbound. And that means the recipient of the inbound call may be stuck with whatever TCPA violation the initiator caused in a vicarious liability theory, merely by answering the phone.

The second issue, of course, is capturing express written consent on an inbound call–which cannot be done very effectively (we’ll leave that discussion for another day.)

Well in Johnson v. Charter Communications, 2022 WL 4285726 (N.D. Al. Sept. 14, 2022) the defendant is facing allegations that a seemingly inbound call was actually the result of an outbound call made by Tranche.

But it gets worse. A lot worse.

Tranche allegedly altered the call recording to make it look like the call came directly from Plaintiff when, in fact, it did not.

An altered call recording is obviously a pretty serious issue since it is an act of fraud–and one that might reflect poorly not just on the lead supplier but on Charter as well.

Notably it looks like Tranche is an off-shore lead supplier. Folks really need to be thoughtful when they rely on off-shore (Pakistan?) lead vendors and call centers. I’m not saying they’re all bad. But, yeah, they’re mostly all bad.

The Plaintiff in Johnson intends to add Tranche to the suit and the Court is allowing the amendment even though it is late in the case. Courts do not like fraud. Not even a little.

Unrelated, if any of you folks are in Vegas this week for insuretech shoot me a note and let’s connect. I’m not on linkedin anymore because it was a lame time suck, but you can shoot a note to Queenie or the Dame, they know how to find me. Email works too.