CHICAGO — 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 local 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 in the first place.
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 combatting 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. And the defendants made their calls even to consumers who had put their numbers on the Do Not Call List, according to the complaint, which was filed in a federal court in Florida earlier this month.
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.
State officials, meanwhile, took action against illegal robocalls involving pharmaceutical, credit-card and loan scams. One complaint filed in federal court by Virginia’s attorney general, for example, targeted Roanoke-based defendants who placed millions of robocalls that did not ring consumers’ phones – but did leave them voicemails – pitching car-selling services.
The announcement of the enforcement efforts come as regulators and telecom giants face immense public pressure for failing to stem the tide of automated spam calls. The deluge of pre-recorded, fraudulent messages has become more than a mere nuisance – robocalls target hospitals so often that doctors and administrators say they threaten to disrupt patient care, The Washington Post has reported.
In response, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have forged ahead with a series of new bills that would amplify the government’s powers for finding and penalizing illegal robocalls. A bipartisan compromise in the House is slated for an early subcommittee vote Tuesday, and the Senate passed its bill almost unanimously earlier this year.
Lawmakers also have prodded the FTC and the government’s telecom agency, the Federal Communications Commission, to toughen their efforts. A bill funding both agencies in the House – expected to come before the chamber soon – explicitly faults the agencies for failing to collect on some of the record fines they’ve levied in the past. Lawmakers also cited the emerging threat to doctors and patients, urging them to prioritize investigations that target hospitals.
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