Director of nuisance-calls company ordered to cough up £114k after ignoring £40k fine from UK data watchdog

2020-09-29 14:30

When the ICO handed IT Protect Ltd a "Monetary penalty notice" back in 2017 for making nuisance sales phone calls, it appears few were expecting the chain of events set off by the fine.

Insolvency and Companies Court Judge Sally Barber ordered Warren Pye to repay a total of £114,508, revealing in a detailed judgment handed down on 25 September how Bognor Regis-based IT Protect Ltd simply ignored its 2017 fine and continued funnelling cash to its director, his partner, and his brother even after the ICO secured a winding-up order against the firm.

After 157 complaints were registered against IT Protect between April 2015 and May 2016, with 69 of those being ignored when regulators forwarded them to IT Protect, the ICO stepped in and issued its £40,000 fine in January 2017.

IT Protect's £40,000 fine has therefore cost more than three times its value to enforce - and so far not a penny has been recovered towards the fine.

Dawn Montague was found by the High Court not to have acted as a de facto director of IT Protect, in the same case where Pye was ordered to pay £114,000.

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