Credit One will pay $10.2 million to settle a civil lawsuit alleging the bank made unreasonably frequent and harassing calls to telephone numbers across California trying to collect consumer debts, according to Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen.

The case was investigated and prosecuted by the California Debt Collection Task Force, a statewide team comprised of the district attorney’s offices in Santa Clara, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Riverside counties.

This is the fourth court-approved settlement announced by the task force, following multi-million-dollar judgments reached against Capital One (2022), Synchrony (2021), and Allied (2018).

The civil complaint alleged that Credit One had a policy allowing its vendors to make eight calls per day, plus an additional two calls per day under certain circumstances on overdue credit card accounts; and that the calls could be placed on consecutive days.

Making repetitive and unreasonable numbers of phone calls to people who owe debts is against the law in California because it is harassment.

“Bombarding consumers with calls over debts is illegal,” Rosen said in a statement.. “Folks may owe money, but companies owe their consumers reasonable civility and consideration.”

The judgment was entered on Feb. 19 in Riverside County Superior Court, which ordered the bank and its agents to implement policies and procedures to prevent unreasonable and harassing debt collection calls to California consumers, including compliance with state and federal law concerning consumer debt collection calls. As part of the settlement, Credit One was ordered to pay $9 million in civil penalties and $1.2 million in investigative costs.