by Structured Settlement Watchdog®
Court Records Scraping for structured settlement transactions placed “on the record”, or petitions for structured settlement transfers
- Scraping of court records for structured settlement transactions placed on the record, or petitions for structured settlement transfers appears to be a necessary evil for cash now pushers.
- With cost per click on Google at in excess of $100 and the cost of television advertising beyond the reach of most, the scrapers get to all sorts of annuitant data. including unlisted phone numbers, at a lower acquisition cost.
Yet, judging by the feedback we are receiving from structured settlement annuitants, the scraped information is then used by cash now pushers to bombard structured settlement annuitants with offers to buy that has reached harassment levels. Last week I reported receiving an email from Penny, a Rochester NY woman who claims that she was subject to 50 such solicitations!
Who are the people that scrape court records for leads for cash now pushers?
One of them has been Betsy Resnick, apparently of Boca Raton Florida. The telephone number which Betsy leaves in her email appears to be registered to Brandon Resnick of Charlotte, NC.
An email sent from Betsy.Resnick@gmail.com states:
- She and her company “are independent contractors who pull information from structured settlement cases as soon as they are filed from courts around the country (about 50 jurisdictions)”.
- She and her company “go through the courts each morning so that you get the freshest leads possible. Every lead has Name, Address, and Filing/Hearing date, and many include Phones, Payment Streams, or Future Benefits, where they are available”
- She and her company “have done legal research for other factoring companies and are very familiar with the industry and with what they need to pull clients in”.
- She and her company “know that most people who sell once, sell again, so you can continually market to them as you grow your database”.
- She and her company “release new records a few times weekly so you’ll always have fresh data. You can buy per lead or on a subscription basis”. [ original email on file]
- Resnick
The scraped names are marketed as “real people that want to sell their structured settlements”
- If Resnick’s leads are from cases which have been freshly put on the record in Florida courts like Broward County and Sumter County, the latter of which has admitted that structured settlements are subject to excessive requests for information; AND
- Resnick’s leads are being represented to potential buyers of that data as “real people who want to sell their structured settlements”, then perhaps the Florida attorney general and attorneys general in other jurisdcitions should be commencing an investigation.
- While the names may be real people, how have Betsy Resnick and her colleagues personally determined that the names that they have scraped in about 50 jurisdictions and hocked “want to sell their structured settlements”?