Consumer Protection Unit Busy

Idaho’s consumer protection unit fielded more citizen complaints and completed more enforcement actions against unscrupulous telemarketers during 1995 than the year before.

Attorney General Alan Lance said on Friday that nearly 100 enforcement actions were completed during the past 12 months, 23 percent more than in 1994 and 10 times as many as in 1990 when the consumer protection division was just being organized. Complaints were also up slightly to over 3,600.

Consumers reported losing nearly $1 million to telemarketing fraud in 1995 while the state recovered $134,000 in penalties and fees and forced more than $530,000 in restitution to consumers.

The restitution amount is substantially lower than for the previous two years but those figures were inflated by the settlement of a major consumer case involving Fleetwood Mortgage.