EXHIBIT G 

Case: 1:12-cv-04415 Document #: 79-7 Filed: 02/04/13 Page 1 of 4 PageID #:1212
   

EXPERT REPORT OF KEN SPONSLER 

I am the Vice President and General Manager of CompliancePoint, DM INC (CompliancePoint) 

with offices in Duluth, GA. CompliancePoint is a wholly owned subsidiary of PossibleNOW, 

INC. I was contacted for the purposes of discussions regarding engagement as an expert witness 

by James C. Vlahakis of Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, counsel for the Defendant First Credit 

Services, Inc. in the case KOFI JAMISON, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, 

Plaintiff, v. FIRST CREDIT SERVICES, INC. dba ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE 

TECHNOLOGIES, and AMERICAN HONDA FINANCE CORPORATION, Defendants, Case 

No. 1:12-cv-04415, Hon. Virginia M. Kendall, IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS, EASTERN DIVISION 

I have been engaged to provide opinions regarding the availability of technology and data 

sources to reliably identify the subscriber names associated with cellular telephone numbers at 

the time the numbers were dialed. For this case, I am charging a rate of $400 per hour. 

Materials reviewed and relied upon: Plaintiff’s Memorandum In Support Of Motion For Class 

Certification and its various Exhibits - Complaint; Defendant First Credit Services, Inc.’s 

Supplemental Answers to Plaintiff’s Interrogatories, Order, Declaration of Keith J. Keogh, , 

Plaintiff's Responses to Defendant's First Discovery Requests (FCS), Plaintiff's Responses to 

Defendant's First Discovery Requests (AHFC), AT&T Response, AT&T Response Part 2, 

Jamison AT&T Phone Bill; Global Connect call records; spread sheets of historical cell phones 

and subscriber identification. 

A copy of my CV is attached hereto as Exhibit A. In addition to the experience identified on my 

CV, in the last four years, I have provided deposition testimony in the following cases: Stephen 

M. Manno, on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated, Plaintiff, vs. Healthcare 

Revenue Recovery Group, LLC d/b/a Account Resolution Services, and Inphynet South Broward, 

INC, defendants, United States District Court Southern District of Florida Case No. 11-61357-

Civ-Scola/Rosenbaum (S.D. Fla.), United States of America and the States of California, Illinois, 

North Carolina and Ohio, v. Dish Network, LLC. Case No.: 3:09-cv-03073 (SEM) (BGC) 

Central District of Illinois, Navarro v. Sears Life Insurance Company, Case No. 2:08-CV-00527-

GEB-EFB, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California; and 

Trilegiant Corporation v. Sitel Corporation, Case No. 1:2009-cv-06492 in the Southern District 

of New York. 

In addition to the publications identified in my CV, in the last ten years I published the article 

entitled “Data Privacy and Security Laws: Is Your Company at Risk?” in the November 2005 

LOMA Resource Magazine. I also publish a monthly compliance article for customer 

distribution. 

Methodology 

In drafting this report and rendering my opinions in this case, I considered the case related 

materials I reviewed, my knowledge of available wireless data sources as well as my experience 

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in compliance and telephone data audit matters. I stay current with industry developments—both 

in terms of technology and compliance—and this has also informed my opinions. 

 

 OPINIONS 

 

1. There is no available data source to mechanically identify the subscribers and users 

associated with mobile telephone numbers.. Additionally, there are several factors that 

greatly diminish the likelihood of reliably identifying mobile telephone subscribers from 

a historical perspective. I describe some of these factors here:

a. Name Directories: There is no publicly available list of mobile phone numbers 

(such as the Yellow Pages or the 411 directory assistance databases for landlines). 

Some mobile service providers participate in a Caller Name or CNAM database. 

This facilitates the transmission of caller ID information similar to landline 

telephone services. The CNAM database is voluntary and subscribers must pay 

additional fees for this feature (usually bundled with other premium features). 

Therefore, it is not universally available even among mobile service providers that 

offer the service. Another factor is carrier participation in the database—among 

the major carriers, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile are accounted for in this 

database, but Verizon is not. Finally, CNAM is relevant only for current 

subscribers, and the data is not completely reliable due to latency in updates and 

inaccurate information. I am unaware of any source for CNAM data from a 

historical perspective.

b. Pre-paid telephones: Pre-paid telephone services introduce another difficulty in 

determining current as well as historical subscriber information. Buyers of prepaid telephone services have not been required to provide name or any other 

identifying information to purchase the services. Several states have enacted laws 

to require buyers of these telephones to provide their names but even that is 

problematic because there is a lack of verification procedures to ensure true 

names are given. In 2010, Senator Charles Schumer introduced S.3427 (Pre-Paid 

Mobile Device Identification Act) which would require purchasers of pre-paid 

telephones to provide identifying information. However, this bill still resides in 

the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. 

c. Subscriber-vs-User: Even if there were reliable sources to determine the identity 

of subscribers from a historical perspective, this information does not definitively 

identify authorized users who may have provided the number during the normal 

course of business. Most mobile telephone service providers use the term 

“subscribers” in ways that are synonymous with persons who are billed for 

services. It is common practice for family and friends to share plans where a 

single subscriber’s name is associated with multiple numbers on the account for 

phones being used by family and others. Many businesses also provide mobile 

devices to their employees which could be used for personal as well as business 

purposes. The business is the “subscriber” and is billed for the services while the 

employees are authorized users.

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d. Mobile Virtual Networks (MVO): Another layer of difficulty in determining 

historical user identities of mobile telephones is the increasingly common practice 

of “wholesaling.” Virgin Mobile, for example, actually provides all of its mobile 

subscriber services through Sprint. Sprint wholesales bandwidth to Virgin 

Mobile. Therefore Virgin Mobile subscribers are actually on the Sprint network, 

which further complicates the ability to reliably associate subscribers through 

providers.

e. Skip Tracing: Skip Tracing methods are sometimes employed by creditors or 

long lost relatives in an attempt to locate persons or specific information about 

persons such as an updated address or telephone number. Skip Tracers generally 

rely upon two basic techniques to find this information. The first is the Internet, 

where publicly available information includes social media sites and search 

engines, and the second is fee based data mining vendors. In the debt collection 

realm, Skip Tracers are often limited by budgetary constraints which are often 

defined by the size of the debt owed by the debtor. This is an important point 

because Skip Tracers may be required to pay hundreds of dollars for “better 

quality” data represented by data mining resources. However, Skip Tracing 

resources, even those that cost several hundred dollars, do not produce reliably 

effective or consistent results.

2. In my opinion, there is no mechanical means to reliably identify subscribers and 

authorized users of mobile telephones from a historical perspective. This is also not 

possible even for current subscribers and authorized users. Skip Tracing methods can be 

prohibitively expensive and produce unreliable results.

 Ken Sponsler 

   

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