FCC Hits Robocall Scammers With $300 Million Fine That Still Somehow Means Nothing
from the round-and-round-we-go dept
Every six months or so the FCC announces it has taken some major new step to thwart annoying robocalls. Yet Americans still receive more than 4.5 billion such calls every month, the vast majority of FCC fines are never collected, scammers elude meaningful accountability, and the problem persists.
Last week for example, the FCC announced it had levied a $300 million fine against what the agency calls “the largest illegal robocall operation the agency has ever investigated.” According to the FCC, the outfit made more than five billion car warranty scam calls to more than 500 million phone numbers during a three month span in 2021, violating federal spoofing laws in a bid to hide their identity:
“We take seriously our responsibility to protect consumers and the integrity of U.S.
communications networks from the onslaught of these types of pernicious calls,” said FCC
Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan A. Egal. “I want to thank the Enforcement Bureau’s
Telecommunications Consumers Division for its groundbreaking work on this case, and we
will continue to work with our federal and state partners to hold these entities and others
engaged in similar conduct accountable.”
The problem, once again, is the scammers will likely never pay a dime. In part because actually collecting those fines falls to the DOJ, which historically either can’t track down the scammers in question, or can’t be bothered. One study found that the FCC and DOJ fined robocallers $208 million between 2015 and 2019, but only $6,790 was ever collected.
Beyond scammers being slippery there are numerous reasons robocalls never really die, and we’ve normalized losing control of our voice networks to dodgy actors.
For one, industry lobbyists have done a good job convincing regulators they should focus exclusively on “scam” calls, letting numerous legit companies and debt collectors harass consumers they know can’t pay — often by using the same tactics as scammers. Those same lobbyists have worked tirelessly to narrow FCC authority and craft broad loopholes in robocall protections that scammers can then exploit.
Groups like the National Consumer Law Center have issued reports noting how we’ve also been slow to thwart robocalls because many major wireless providers have profited from the scams. They’ve offered clear plans the FCC has yet to fully adopt, in part because the agency historically lacks the backbone to stand up to politically powerful telecom giants.
Activists and the FCC have argued for broader authority here, but our corrupt Congress has generally responded by doing the opposite and trimming FCC authority on most issues related to consumer protection (see: net neutrality, broadband privacy, media consolidation).
That’s not to say the FCC hasn’t occasionally made progress. They’ve finally managed to nudge a lagging industry into adopting anti-spoofing measures. And they have cracked down more intensely on the kind of dodgy telecom middlemen that help facilitate calls. But without greater authority and a sharper eye cast on “legit” robocallers (and their lobbying influence), the problem persists.
Filed Under: auto warranty scam, fcc, fines, robocall, scammers, telecom
Comments on “FCC Hits Robocall Scammers With $300 Million Fine That Still Somehow Means Nothing”
Amend the Do Not Call Act
I think that the Federal “Do Not Call Act” needs to be amended
substantially to deal with this situation:
1) Penalties need to be adjusted for the inflation that has occurred
since the 1991 passage of the Act. I suggest they should be
adjusted annually by the greater of the annual Consumer Price Index
inflation rate and the annual Producer Consumer Price Index
inflatioin rate.
2) Presently, the Act lists several “aggravating factors”, which
increase the statutory penalties from $500 to $1500. Even if
multiple aggravating factors are present, the penalty does not
increase beyond the $1000 penalty for a single aggravating factor,
Instead, the penalties should have a 19901_$ 1000.00 increment
for each aggravating factor — so that, for example, if three
aggravating factors are present, the statutory damages should be
1991_$ 3500.00 In particular, each request by the callee never
to be called again should also be regarded as a separate
aggravation, so in the case of a caller having been told by the
callee 100 times never to call again, the damages should be 1991_$
100,500.00.
3) Robo-calls are especially disruptive. The statutory
damage-increment for robo-calls should be 1991_$ 3000.00
instead of 1991_$ 1000.00. Moreover, the callee should
be reimbursed for attorney and court costs.
4) Spoofed-number calls are inherently deceptive, and should be
considered deliberately fraudulent. The statutory damage-increment
for spoofed-number calls should be 1991_$ 5000.00. Moreover, the
callee should be reimbursed for attorney and court costs.
Spoofing either a government or medical-provider number should be
a felony (just as impersonating a police officer is); the statutory
damage increment in that case should be at least 1991_$ 20000.00.
5) As noted above, currently telecommunications vendors have no
incentive to cooperate with callees, making spoofed-number calls
almost impossible to track and penalize. Instead, they need an
incentive. Telecommunications vendors should be reimbursed by the
court at a rate of 3x their costs, for helping to establish the
identities of guilty parties. That way, helping to solve this
situation would be a profit-center instead of a loss-center for
them.
6) When foreign call centers are found responsible for violating
the Act, they should be cut off from telecommunications-contact
with the US, by whatever means (diplomatic or otherwise) are
necessary. Note that in this case, the NSA almost certainly knows
exactly who is responsible. They should do whatever is necessary
to stop this invasion of my home.
Re:
These are also excellent ideas but 2x and 3x of $0 is still $0.
In other words, the FTC could find the scammers guilty and fine them a million dollars and 50 years in jail, but:
1) Good luck linking the spoofed and disconnected numbers to a real company.
2) Good luck finding the owners of the company after it’s been shut down after making a billion calls
3) And then if the FTC finds the company and if they find the owners, good luck enforcing any judgement against them since they’re probably in India or China.
The better way to stop robocalls is to fine the US carriers that keep connecting the calls. If a call screening app labels the number as a scam and if there are 100 reports about the number being a scam, why in the world is the carrier letting the call go through?
Re: Re: Do Not Call Act
Presently, with no reimbursement it is a cost-center for the telecom companies to help solve the problem. By reimbursing them for triple-time, you might make it a profit-center, instead. That the current law hopes they will do something for nothing is unreasonable.
And as for the rest of it, make the penalties large enough to be an employment act for ambulance-chasers. I’ve suggested penalties large enough that it should be profitable for them.
Re:
I can’t forget the time, about 10 years ago, when I strongly suspect that whatever cellular provider I was using at the time had a data breach. I started getting one telemarketer who consistently spoofed my boss’s number! (I eventually had to say, “Boss, I’m going to have to consistently send you to voicemail because of this nonsense. I’ll call you back, I promise, or text me and I’ll call you,” and block the number from ringing the phone.)
Dreaming of effective regulation.
Well, using a recent court ruling, big telecom can be held equally responsible for scam calls….
Re: Phone Compines...
Telcoms make BIG money allowing the amount of traffic scammers push into the system. Its like the old joke, “How much of my platform is porn? 97%” Well I don’t have inside numbers, but number of calls attempted could easily hit those numbers.
Fine the Phone companies for allowing their networks to degrade into spam.
Money
It’s a nonsensical thing to say that consumers cannot pay. By attempting to sell a product or collect a debt from someone who cannot pay, a legitimate company would be unable to obtain funding, much less stay in business for long. Harassing phone calls should be outlawed, but make no mistake that they can often pay. Follow the money, and you will see that both legitimate and illegitimate businesses place these calls for a reason.
Re:
“It’s a nonsensical thing to say that consumers cannot pay.”
Funny that .. money grows on trees now! WooHooo
Same problem everywhere. Same toothless punishment for the telcos that can do something to stop it but don’t do it because profits.
The solution I came up with was to have a “business” number that anyone can call and a personal one that only receives calls from people on my contacts (whitelist). I turn off the non-whitelist phone outside of business hours and block any number that originates robocalls, whatever they are about. Nowadays I receive very few robocalls, like 1 or 2 per week but it was pretty bad some years ago.
My favorite bs call was one where I was informed that on the following tuesday between 12 and 2 there would be police at my door to arrest me if I did not send them money to cover some bs they made up.
I waited patently and no one showed – lol.
has the fine been paid, in full? of course it hasnt nor will it be.if it was some poor, hard up, family man who not only didnt do the dastardly deed but hadnt a hope in hell of paying the fine, everyone in govt, in FCC, the entertainment industries and everywhere else would be on the poor fucker like a rash! in cases like this not a single thing will be said or done to satisfy the non-payment! in other words, what is a typical usa happening!
Good ideas all, but...
What’s the point in modifying legislation if the DOJ isn’t going to enforce it? One of the major points of the article is the fact that the DOJ isn’t going to do anything.
Marketing calls are a nuisance, but I’m guessing that from their point of view, they have much bigger fish to fry. What those fish are, I have no idea.
Re:
Here’s a clue: they’re orange, fat, and too small.
The is where the bounty laws would come in handy. Let us know who the scammers are and pay a million dollar reward for turning them in. To make it really fun, “Dead or Alive”.
Re: Easy way...
“Dead”?! There’s getting off easy…
Re: Re:
Oh, so you’d make ’em sit in a prison cell and force them to answer an in-cell phone 24/7, is that about it? Well, I’d make them answer by sending a pretty powerful jolt through their scrotum if the don’t answer within 10 seconds. Then they’d have to listen to a sales pitch, and if they hang up early out of sheer desperation, I’d sound a piercing scream over the in-cell speakers, installed especially for this purpose.
For the coup-de-grace: Make that sales pitch a repeated offer for a magic “Get Out Of Jail Free” card!
Re:
I was going to suggest the same thing. Bounty laws (Texas vs abortion, Utah vs porn) empower individuals to file suit against whoever facilitates whatever it is. Any state could pass a law allowing you to sue your carrier for “one meellion dollars” for every robocall or spam text. The spammers would be blocked that day.
They won’t, of course, because the carriers can bribecough sorry, I meant lobby against it harder than we voters.
Orson Swindle was an FTC Commissioner from 1997 to 2005. During a Congressional hearing (about spam, a problem similar to robocalls and often generated by the same people) in 2003, he opined that “What we need are a couple of good hangings”. He was right then, and twenty years later, he’s still right.
Prision
Until people are locked up and sent to prison, this will never change. Lock them up!