A few years ago, the federal government started the Do Not Call Registry, allowing home phone owners to bar telemarketers from calling.

While the list is considered a success, many telemarketing calls still slip through. That led a man in Sacramento, Calif. Take the most persistent callers to small claims court.

How to Make Money From the Do Not Call List: A Step-by-Step Guide to Suing Telemarketers for Profit: Trey Spetch: lazuxyderonav.web.fc2.com: Books

For Andre-Tascha Lamme, the last straw came a few months ago. Over the summer he began getting phone calls from mortgage companies — as many as 15 a week. The calls started coming, he says because the rate on his mortgage was about to go up. And someone had passed on his name to dozens of small refinancing companies.

Lamme, a year-old computer consultant who lives in Sacramento, had placed his name on the National Do Not Call Registry and he knew that telemarketers weren't supposed to call him.

But he also knew that under a little known provision of the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act he could sue persistent telemarketers in small claims court and actually receive damages for each call.

Jack Gillis of the Consumer Federation of America points out that going to small claims court is time-consuming. And he says not that many people want to do it. So he doesn't think that Lamme's strategy will really deter many telemarketers from making unwanted calls. The whole idea is, I'm sick of the calls, you're sick of the calls. These are your rights. Take back your bloody phone from these folks.

It's a message that a lot of people are eager to hear. As of today, Lamme says he has received about 1, e-mails from people looking for advice — even though his Web site is less than two weeks old. He says a lot of the people who contact him are especially annoyed about robo-calls — automated calls received during political campaigns. Lamme says the government needs to make it easier to curb those, as well.

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