Shaun Harkin was the sole director of Easyleads Limited, a company that generated sales leads for other businesses through telephone marketing calls, but he was knowingly breaking the law.

Cold callers cannot phone people indiscriminately – especially not those registered on the Telephone Preference Service i.e. registered as not accepting cold calls.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) received many hundreds of complaints about automated calls from numbers used by Easyleads.

The ICO warned of their investigation into the new complaints.

Despite this warning, Shaun Harkin continued his cold calling campaigns and the ICO continued to receive complaints about Easyleads.

The ICO issued a £260,000 fine against Easyleads for making unsolicited marketing calls to people without their consent and failing to include a company name and contact details in the recorded message.

Easyleads failed to pay the debt so the ICO got the court to wind up the company.

Investigations by the Insolvency Service found that the company had made around 16 million automated marketing calls to members of the public.

Many complainants were from people who said they received multiple calls, while others complained about being called in the early hours of the morning.

From July 2018, Shaun Harkin is banned from directly or indirectly becoming involved, without the permission of the court, in the promotion, formation or management of a company for six years.

Hopefully he will learn to treat the public in a better manner rather than as people to be taken advantage of.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.