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Law360 (June 24, 2021, 8:05 PM EDT) -- The Federal Trade Commission wants a California federal court to go ahead and declare it the winner in a civil enforcement action against a man accused of running a $1.2 million scam advertising unlimited inmate calling plans they could not provide.
On Thursday, the agency asked the court to grant summary judgment against Marc Grisham, arguing that there were no genuine issues of material fact left to be settled and that he had defrauded at least 12,000 different customers out of roughly $1.2 million.
"Mr. Grisham ignored consumer complaints and even legal action to perpetuate the multi-year scam," the agency said. "When payment processors realized one of his companies was a scam and notified him of that determination, Mr. Grisham simply continued his deceptive practices under a new company name."
The agency is asking for an early win on two claims, one alleging that Grisham falsely represented that he was providing families and friends of inmates with unlimited minutes and another accusing him of making false claims about his relationships with specialized service providers.
According to the FTC, Marc and Courtney Grisham, along with their two companies, lied about the services they were offering, luring customers in with promises of unlimited calls to inmates for a flat fee only for them to find that they still had to pay so-called specialized service providers, who run the prison phone system.
The motion for summary judgment, however, is only for Marc Grisham. The agency has asked for a default judgment against Courtney Grisham and the two companies, Disruption Theory and Emergent Technologies.
People would pay inmatecall.com and inmatecallsolutions.com prices ranging from $29.97 for one month of supposedly unlimited inmate calls, $49.97 for three months, and $89.97 for one year, only to find out it was a scam, according to the FTC. The companies would dodge anyone trying to get refunds, going so far as to open a new company, according to court records.
"For many consumers, the economic loss was significant," the agency said.
The FTC is represented in-house by Alden F. Abbott, N. Diana Chang, Emily Cope Burton and Sarah Schroeder.
Counsel information for the Grishams and their businesses was not immediately available.
The case is Federal Trade Commission v. Disruption Theory LLC et al., case number 3:20-cv-06919, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
--Editing by Jay Jackson Jr.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
