Federal, state officials announce major crackdown on illegal robocalls
Federal and state authorities on Tuesday announced they had punished dozens of illegal robocallers that allegedly placed an estimated 1 billion spam calls to consumers, a crackdown they said should send a signal about the government’s heightened attention to Americans targeted by such scams.
Some of the robocallers sought to deceive people into paying fees or surrendering their personal information for fraudulent services, such as lowering their credit card interest rates or providing help with health insurance, according to the Federal Trade Commission, which worked alongside state attorneys general and other law enforcement officials.
In total, they said their operation spanned 94 actions over the past nine months, including issuing warning letters and fines or filing charges in court. Violators ran afoul of a wide array of state and federal rules, including laws that require that marketers obtain consent before contacting consumers.
The government’s efforts come as robocalls continue to ring Americans’ phones at record rates: Scam calls comprised a large share of the estimated 4.7 billion robocalls to mobile devices in May, according to YouMail, an app that helps block them. That’s more than double the amount from two years ago, an uptick that has prompted Americans to complain to the FTC at historic levels. The agency said Tuesday it now receives on average about 10,000 robocall complaints per day.
“We’re all fed up with the tens of billions of illegal robocalls we get every year,” Andrew Smith, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement. “Today’s joint effort shows that combating this scourge remains a top priority for law enforcement agencies around the nation.”
The FTC’s new actions include a case against a firm called First Choice Horizon LLC, the lead entity in what the government described as a “maze of interrelated operations” that preyed on Americans who are in financial distress, including seniors.
In those calls, the defendants allegedly offered to help people lower their credit-card interest rates provided they paid a fee. But those affiliated with First Choice Horizon LLC ultimately tricked consumers into surrendering their sensitive information, including the Social Security numbers, the FTC said.
Another target of the FTC’s efforts, a company called Media Mix 365, dialed millions of phone numbers on the Do Not Call registry in an attempt to “develop leads for home solar energy companies,” the agency said. In one case, the defendants allegedly contacted a single number more than 1,000 times in the same year, according to the complaint.