Student Loan Servicer Secretly Recorded Consumers' Calls: Class Action

Educational Credit Management Corp. (ECMC), a student loan servicer, recorded its phone conversations with plaintiff Cynthia Lepur without her consent, in violation of the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA), alleged her class action Nov. 15 in San Diego County Superior Court. ECMC removed the complaint Wednesday (docket 3:23-cv-00014) to U.S. District Court for Southern California in San Diego

The phone calls Lepur placed to an ECMC representative in February 2015 involved “personal financial affairs” that Lepur had “not openly discussed with others,” said her complaint. ECMC didn't warn Lepur the calls between them would be recorded, and she “never gave consent for the calls to be recorded,” it said. She didn't hear “intermittent beeping sounds during the calls” that may have alerted her that the calls were being recorded, it said.

Had Lepur known ECMC was secretly recording her, she would have discontinued the calls, said her complaint. “Reasonable California residents expect that their telephone communications are not being recorded in the absence of a call recording advisement of some kind at the outset of the telephone call(s), since call recording advisements given at the outset of telephonic communications with businesses are ubiquitous today,” it said. Lepur is one of three named plaintiffs in a nearly identical class action against ECMC (docket 2:21-cv-08585) pending in U.S. District Court for Central California in Los Angeles, represented by the same attorney, class action specialist Ronald Marron.

The California penal code “is very clear in its prohibition against such unauthorized tape recording without the consent of the other party to the conversation,” said Lepur’s complaint. ECMS violated Lepur’s “constitutionally protected privacy rights by failing to advise or otherwise provide notice at the beginning of the recorded conversations” with her that the calls would be recorded, it said. She believes ECMC “had a policy and a practice of recording all inbound and outbound telephone conversations with consumers,” it said.

The applicable statute of limitations for Lepur “has been tolled by operation of delayed discovery,” said her complaint. Because ECMS “secretly recorded the telephone calls of all putative class members and concealed that the calls were recorded,” Lepur “could not have reasonably discovered” ECMS’ privacy violations, it said.

Lepur became aware of her CIPA claim against ECMS for the first time in November 2021 when she received an email “advising of a potential claim,” and providing contact information should she like to discuss potential legal action, said her complaint. The email advised that lawyers for Beheshta Mahboob, the plaintiff in another action against ECMC, were “seeking witnesses to substantiate Ms. Mahboob’s claims as well as potential class representatives to lead the litigation with Ms. Mahboob,” it said. Lepur ultimately joined that litigation roughly a month after receiving her first email.

Lepur seeks for herself and each class member “the greater of” $5,000 for each violation or “three times actual damage” per violation, plus the compensatory, consequential, statutory, restitutionary and treble damages she's entitled to under California statutes, said her complaint. She also seeks injunctive relief prohibiting such conduct in the future and requiring ECMS to “maintain the confidentiality of all information previously obtained,” plus attorneys’ fees.