St. Louis judge issues TRO against online matchmaking service

St. Louis Daily Record & St. Louis Countian, Aug 3, 2006 by Emily Umbright

Not even the sultry voice of Carmen Electra could disguise the belief of 140 St. Louis-area phone subscribers that the telephone calls bearing her name were the result of telemarketers.

Upon request by the Missouri Attorney General's Office, St. Louis Circuit Judge Lisa Van Amburg issued a temporary restraining order Tuesday that for 10 days blocks a California-based online dating service and others from making telemarketing calls to consumers on the state's no-call list.

Van Amburg's order also prohibits the defendants from using any method that could block or circumvent a phone subscriber's caller ID service.

The petition, filed by the attorney general's Eastern District office, alleges online matchmaking service Luvoo.com Inc., its owner Lourdes U. Van Hoek, and Portland, Ore.-based Telephone Management Corp. violated Missouri's Telemarketing No-Call List Act by calling subscribers who had signed up on the state's no-call list.

The attorney general's office said that most of the 140 violations occurred in the St. Louis metropolitan area as part of a nationwide promotional campaign. The consumers received the calls during the month of June, the petition states.

What it was was a pre-recorded message from Carmen Electra saying, 'Go to this Luvoo Web site and become a member, and we'll hook you up with people that are compatible,' said Rex Burlison, chief counsel in the attorney general's Eastern District Office.

Missouri's law prohibits people or businesses from making telephone-based solicitations to residential subscribers who have signed up for the state's no-call registry. The statute also provides that if the state prevails, it can recover up to $5,000 per violation in addition to court costs.

Burlison said any money recovered from the action would go to the Merchandising Practices Revolving Fund, which finances future no- call legal actions.

That fund is used to pay for investigations and prosecutions of other no-call frauds, he explained.

The Attorney General's Office provides quarterly no-call lists for $50 for each of Missouri's six area codes. However, the petition asserts that neither Luvoo.com nor Telephone Management Corp. purchased the list.

Burlison said the defendants received 24 hours' notice of the TRO petition, as required by law, but that he has not yet received communication from them.

Many other states have adopted no-call laws similar to Missouri's, and Burlison said he has heard of these companies trying to get around their laws as well.

These were computer-generated recorded messages that they just flooded Missouri and other states with, he said.

In a statement Wednesday, Attorney General Jay Nixon said, We're going to remain vigilant in enforcing the state's No-Call law and providing Missourians with peace and quiet, as we have for the past five years the law's been in effect.

Nearly 2.3 million residential telephone numbers are registered on the state's no-call list, according to the Attorney General's Web site, and since the law's activation, more than $1.7 million in penalties have been collected against violating telemarketers.