In a significant legal move, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has filed a lawsuit against alternative energy supplier Spark Energy LLC, alleging a host of deceptive and unfair business practices. According to the Illinois Attorney General’s office, Spark Energy is accused of enrolling customers without their consent, raising electricity and gas rates without prior notice, and misleading consumers with false savings claims.
The lawsuit points to numerous transgressions, including Spark Energy’s enrollment of consumers in their services without their knowledge or consent, failure to properly obtain consent to telemarketing solicitations, altering telemarketing records, and deceptively obtaining consumer account information. These practices, Raoul emphasizes, have caused Illinois consumers to pay millions more for their energy needs. “Companies like Spark must be held accountable for taking advantage of consumers with misrepresentations and false promises of lower prices,” Raoul said, in a statement that demonstrates the state’s resolve to protect its residents from such practices.
These allegations are not an isolated incident but part of a broader campaign by the Attorney General’s office to address the misconduct of alternative energy suppliers. In the past, settlements have been announced with other suppliers on similar grounds: in December 2024, a settlement of $3.5 million with Palmco Power IL, also known as Indra Energy, and a hefty $10 million with Teleperformance entities related to misleading practices were disclosed. This court action, not to mention, builds on previous lawsuits against various other suppliers, reinforcing the pattern of allegedly predatory energy sales tactics in the state…