Louis Kidd, 27, lives at home with his mother in Brighton but was the owner of Prodial – a company responsible for 46 million nuisance phone calls in the UK about PPI (Payment Protection Insurance).

Prodial’s computer systems would dial numbers and play a recorded message about claiming PPI. Anyone who responded would have their details sold on to Claims Management companies.

The automated calls, dialled from a computer server in the south east of England, hit homes across Britain at the rate of over 330,000 a day, at all times of the day and night between January 20 and August 21, 2015.

Complainants said they were called repeatedly and often there was no way to opt out even for people who had never had PPI.

The Information Commissioners Office estimated that Prodial was making as much as £100,000 per month and described the operation as ‘one of the worst cases’ they had ever come across.

The regulator has ordered Prodial to pay a £350,000 fine but the company was wound up before the prosecution and has no assets left. Liquidators are trying to determine where the money has disappeared to.

Previous Companies

Mr Kidd and Mr Carrington (his business partner)  both worked previously at Italk Affiliate Telecommunications, which is itself under investigation by the ICO for making between four million and six million calls a day using similar,  technology to Prodial.

Italk was raided by the ICO in March last year and faces a possible maximum fine of £500,000. By then, Mr Kidd and Mr Carrington had jumped ship.

There appears to be a group of people who know how to abuse the system and some have got away with it for a long time as this has happened with other companies as well.

The Result

Prodial has been fined and is out of business, but the people responsible are free to open more companies and able do the same thing again.

“There is a group of people who know how to abuse the system and some have got away with it for longer than others,” said a source familiar with the investigation.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.