An insurer is being sued over emails that allegedly posed as the Department of Veterans Affairs to push insurance ads.
Jasmine Castrillo filed the proposed class action on May 13 in the US District Court for the Southern District of California. The complaint accuses American Family Mutual Insurance Company of using a marketing affiliate, The Wisdom Companies LLC, to send Californians deceptive spam.
The emails appeared to come from "Department_of VA_Records," according to the filing, with the subject line "Unclaimed Adjustment: Check your entitlement status." The complaint says recipients were told their "service records" had been "audited" and that they "must" access a secure portal or their "benefits" would be suspended.
Castrillo says clicking the link sent her to veterandiscounts.live, which she alleges was built to look like an official US government page. From there, the complaint says, another link routed her to midasrates.com, which advertised American Family policies. She then landed on AMFAM.COM.
The filing alleges the emails carried a forged header, a spoofed domain, and failed authentication checks - DKIM failure and DMARC rejection. It also alleges the messages held invisible 1x1 tracking pixels that monitored recipients without consent.
The first count is built on California's anti-spam statute, Business and Professions Code § 17529.5, which sets liquidated damages at $1,000 per email. The complaint relies on Hypertouch v. ValueClick for the principle that the law "impos[es] strict liability on advertisers who benefit from (and are the ultimate cause of) deceptive e-mails." The theory: a carrier whose products were advertised can be on the hook even if it did not send the messages itself.
The second count is privacy. Once Castrillo reached AMFAM.COM, the complaint says, the site installed tracking pixels that captured "routing, addressing and/or other signaling information of website visitors" and fed data to brokers including Google Analytics. Castrillo calls that a "trap and trace" device under California Penal Code § 638.51, which bars installing one without a court order. She also alleges intrusion upon seclusion.
The complaint says the class is believed to include over 10,000 members - and elsewhere puts the figure at least 100,000 - with an amount in controversy believed to exceed $100 million. It alleges American Family or its affiliates send over 100,000 spam emails to Californians a year. Castrillo is seeking statutory damages, punitive damages, injunctive relief, and attorneys' fees.
The allegations have not been tested in court. American Family has not yet filed a response, and no court has ruled.
