November 10, 2005
Verizon Wireless has filed suit and obtained an immediate injunction against a Florida-based private investigative agency and its affiliates to stop their attempts to fraudulently obtain confidential information about Verizon Wireless customers.
The civil suit, filed in Hillsborough County, Florida, charges that Global Information Group (GIG) of Temple Terrace, FL, made thousands of attempts to gather confidential information without proper authorization and used various fraudulent schemes to do so, including impersonating Verizon Wireless employees and posing as Verizon Wireless customers.
The court issued an immediate temporary restraining order, prohibiting the defendants from any further attempts to obtain confidential information from Verizon Wireless, any further contact with Verizon Wireless customer service centers, or providing any confidential customer information to third parties.
Verizon Wireless also obtained an order from the court entitling it to seize any information the defendants may have gathered. The company says it is taking these steps to protect its customers from getting bombarded with telemarketers calls on their cell phones.
Verizon Wireless will use all the weapons in our legal arsenal to protect our customers private and confidential information, said Steven Zipperstein, General Counsel and Vice President of Legal and External Affairs for Verizon Wireless.
We simply will not tolerate fraudulent schemes that prey on our company and our customers. We are very grateful to the Hillsborough County Sheriffs Office for their invaluable assistance in enforcing the courts seizure order.
This is the second time in recent months that Verizon Wireless has taken legal steps to protect its customers privacy.
This summer, the company secured a court order to halt a Tennessee-based companys illegal practice of using fraudulent means to obtain and sell confidential customer telephone records. The company also obtained injunctions against telemarketing firms based in Florida and California this summer, halting them from making illegal sales calls to its customers.
