Ask what a Do Not Call violation costs and the honest answer is: more than one number, because a single bad call can trigger three separate kinds of liability at once. Here is the actual math.
Calling a number on the National Do Not Call Registry violates the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and the FTC can pursue a civil penalty of up to $53,088 per call. That figure adjusts for inflation each year, so it climbs over time. It is assessed per violation, meaning a campaign that dials a stale list is not one violation, it is one per number.
Separate from the federal penalty, the TCPA gives consumers a private right of action. They can sue directly for $500 per call and up to $1,500 for a willful violation, plus attorney fees. These are frequently filed as class actions, and serial plaintiffs build cases specifically to collect them. Because many of these plaintiffs keep their numbers off the registry, a DNC scrub alone will not stop them.
If you called into a state that runs its own list, add a third layer. State penalties stack on the federal exposure and vary widely:
Stack it up and a single unscrubbed call to the wrong number in the wrong state can draw a federal penalty, a private TCPA claim, and a state fine, all from one dial. Multiply that across a campaign and the numbers stop being hypothetical.
Against that, scrubbing is the cheapest insurance in the business. A clean scrub before every campaign removes registered numbers, known litigators, and unconsented wireless lines, which is where nearly all of this liability comes from. The cost of scrubbing a list is a rounding error next to the cost of one lawsuit.
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