Two businessmen have admitted sending out a blizzard of 2million nuisance text messages every day of the week.
The nuisance text rogues revealed they banked on getting 300 responses for every 200,000 sent out.
The texts were promising pay-outs on Payment Protection Insurance and for injuries suffered in road accidents.
The details of the people who responded were then sold on to claims companies that would take big fees for pursuing claims.
Andrew Horner-Glister and Barry Sanders allegedly ran several businesses which plagued peoples’ mobile phones, according to an investigation by the BBC.
While being secretly filmed, Mr Horner-Glister said: ‘We send 200,000 texts out, get 300 positive responses back, we did that for years. We were probably the largest in the UK.’
Andrew Horner-Glister and Barry Sanders allegedly ran several businesses which text people’s mobile phones, offering payouts on PPI and road traffic accidents
The men knew they were in the wrong, with Mr Sanders admitting: ‘To be fair though, people were getting harassed.’
Both directors were targeted as part of a three-year BBC Inside Out investigation into nuisance text messages.
The pair said they have not distributed text messages themselves since 2012 and claim when they did it was legal, however the BBC discovered that companies under their control continued to sell on leads generated from indiscriminate text messages.
Targeting people who have not given permission to receive marketing texts has been illegal since 2003.
Policing the system is the responsibility of the Information Commissioner’s Office, which has dished a number of six figure fines against guilty firms.
However, these have rarely been enforced because the firms are shut down and the directors effectively escape any punishment.
Both directors declined the BBC’s repeated requests for an interview but when Barry Sanders was confronted he told the BBC: ‘We haven’t done texting for years’.
* BBC One Inside Out 7.30pm tonight in London/West Midlands/East Midlands/Yorkshire & Lincolnshire, North East & Cumbria.