Newsmax accused of charging 93-year-old man $4,596 for magazine subscriptions
Telemarketers working for the right-wing news organization Newsmax Media pressured a 93-year-old West Palm Beach man into buying dozens of magazine and newsletter subscriptions that cost him $4,596 over two years, a federal lawsuit claims.
A caretaker for Bernard Cohen realized something was amiss when she started noticing copies of Newsmax Magazine, Dr. Crandall Report, The Mind Health Report, The Dividend Machine and The High Income Factor piling up in his apartment, according to a news release by Cohen’s attorneys.
With Cohen’s and his family’s permission, the caretaker reviewed his phone and bank records and traced “scores” of incoming cellphone calls to a Newsmax phone number and dozens of credit and debit card charges for publications marketed by the company, the release states.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach by Fort Lauderdale-based Edwards Pottinger LLC and two New York-based firms, Pollock Cohen LLP and Schlanger Law Group LLP, claims that Newsmax violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which forbids unwanted marketing calls. Cohen’s cellphone number has been registered on the national Do-Not-Call Registry since 2009, the suit states.
Newsmax issued this statement in response to the suit: “We are aware a complaint has been filed, but we have not been served. The complaint is baseless. The complainant has been a customer of ours for over five years, and we have regularly refunded them in the past.”
Riding a surge in popularity among Donald Trump supporters since Fox News called the 2020 election for Joe Biden, Boca Raton-based Newsmax Media operates cable and streaming media channels and a news website. The website features a “Newsmax Shop” that sells branded apparel, office gear, DVDs, books and subscriptions to finance and health publications.
According to the suit: Cohen was charged 49 times, including by automatic renewal, between May 2019 and February 2021. He was charged five times for subscriptions to Newsmax Magazine between November 2019 and December 2020. He was charged four times for The Mind Health Report between November 2019 and July 2020. He was charged twice over six months for the Dr. Crandall Report and three times over six days for The Dividend Machine.
The suit claims that when the caretaker called Newsmax to cancel the subscriptions and get refunds for Cohen, a customer service agent said that Cohen had placed several magazine orders via the internet.
“That is patently impossible,” the suit states. “Mr. Cohen does not own a computer, does not have internet service in his home, or have an internet-enable phone. Mr. Cohen does not know how to text or use voicemail on his phone.”
Cohen never gave Newsmax his cellphone number, never consented to unsolicited calls, and “has never had any form of business relationship with” Newsmax, the suit says.
On one occasion, the caretaker was at Cohen’s house talking on her phone to a Newsmax customer service agent who tried to assure her that Newsmax never makes outbound calls, the news release states. “Just then, Mr. Cohen’s cellphone rang,” it said, adding, the caretaker heard him say, “I don’t need any more magazines, thank you.”
Attorney Seth Lehrman, a partner at Edwards Pottinger LLC, said in the news release, “Calling people who have explicitly made it clear that they do not want to be called or solicited by telephone is a violation of the TCPA. Month after month, unwanted telephone calls, robocalls, and texts top the list of consumer complaints received by the Federal Communications Commission. The TCPA is designed to prevent these and to help protect consumer privacy.”
The suit seeks class-action status. The news release quotes Pollock Cohen partner Steve Cohen — nephew of the plaintiff — as saying the problem is not limited to Bernard Cohen.
“We have heard of dozens of similar incidents involving seniors,” the attorney said.
As its popularity has increased, Newsmax has been a target of controversy over its content and advertising. Last spring, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation demanded the network stop running ads from a gold investment company that claimed FDIC-insured deposits could be legally seized by banks.
In late April, the company apologized for airing false claims that the security director of Dominion Voting Systems manipulated the company’s voting machines to prevent Trump’s reelection. The security director then dropped Newsmax from a defamation suit filed against numerous outlets.
In December, the company retracted statements about Dominon and rival Smartmatic after Smartmatic filed a $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox News.
