Class Action Alleges Broker Sent Hundreds of Text Messages to Wrong Person
Rebuilt Realty, a real estate broker in Travis County, Texas, has inundated plaintiff Ananda Camargo Chavez’s residential cellphone with at least 219 automated telemarketing text messages since March 2022, though her number has been listed on the national do not…
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call registry for years, alleged her Telephone Consumer Protection Act class action Friday (docket 1:24-cv-00504) in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in Austin. The messages all contain “short links” that advertise properties Rebuilt has available for sale, said the complaint. The messages are all addressed to a person named “Javier,” who Chavez doesn’t know, it said. To call Chavez “Javier” is “disingenuous to Hispanic Americans and labels them all alike,” said the complaint. It’s “akin” to calling all Asian persons “Wei” or "all Caucasians 'Steve,'” it said. None of Rebuilt’s agents is registered as a telephone solicitor with the Texas secretary of state, as state law requires, it said. A “reasonable seller” would investigate the reasons why it would be sending hundreds of messages to numbers on the national DNC registry that didn’t belong to “Javier,” it said. Chavez and all members of the class have been harmed by Rebuilt’s acts of “because their privacy has been violated and they were annoyed and harassed,” said the complaint.