We've found our new favorite legal complaint of the year.
As he promised, Hallandale attorney Scott Owens has filed a federal class action lawsuit against the "junk cars"-seeking text message spammers we first exposed.
The damages, by Owens's math? One billion dollars.
Owens is suing Gregorio A. Tejera-- whom we identified as the likely spam kingpin at the top of the "junk cars" pyramid -- Lazaro W. Diaz-Fernandez, and Jose Leyva, with room for John Does to be added as they are identified as being behind the spam.
The complaint, filed Tuesday, channels the righteous wrath of the populace. If Moses was a lawyer, this is what his legal filings would look like.
Here's the first sentence:
The so-called "JUNK CARS" text message has been a pox upon the cellular telephones of Florida consumers for more than a year.
Here's the third sentence:
Defendants are largely regarded as the most detested telemarketers in the state of Florida, and at the statutory minimum of $500 per unlawful text message, are now indebted to Florida consumers in an amount exceeding one billion dollars ($1,000,000,000.00).
At damages of $500 per text, to get a total of $1 billion, Tejera's crew would have had to send out [opens calculator application on computer] 2 million "junk cars" texts. It does seem like every soul in South Florida has gotten one of these texts, and some have gotten 38 of these texts. So we're not going to argue with the math, which is clearly designed to make Tejera & Co. poop their pants.
Three lucky South Floridians -- Luis Lebron, David N. Emihovich, and Jose Roque -- have the honor of representing all plaintiffs in this suit. They claim to have gotten these sort of text messages:
Cell 305-824-7923 COMPRO CARROS//$400 WE BUY JUNK CARS//$400 cell 305-824-7923
$475 CASH!: LET'S SAVE OUR PLANET RECYCLE YOUR OLD VEHICLE CALL NOW 305-812-6713
$400-475 WE BUY JUNK CARS (COMPRAMOS CARROS PARA RASTRO) CALL 786-354-3727
Tejera's statements to us-- that he bought the cell phone numbers "from the government"-- are entered as evidence in the complaint.
We tried reaching Tejera about this lawsuit. We called the number -- 305-303-0119 -- that we had previously published as being the source of the text spam.
Apparently, you guys really did send his photos of your junk. The number has been disconnected. (There is no attorney listed in court yet representing any of the defendents.)
Here's the complaint in all its furious glory:
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