The U.S. Federal Communications Commission proposed today a record-breaking $300 million fine against an auto warranty robocall operation that made billions of calls to more than 550 million phones across the United States.
This operation was run by Michael Aaron Jones and Roy Cox, Jr. since at least 2018, and it was the largest robocall operation ever investigated by the FCC.
Their robocall sales lead generation scheme was designed to sell vehicle service contracts deceptively marketed as car warranties in phone calls described by those on the other end of the line as “incessant” and “harassment.”
Such robocalls also reached healthcare workers during the COVID pandemic and spoofed hospitals’ phone numbers, leading people who received them to call back and block the hospitals’ phone lines.
“This robocall scheme made more than 5 billion robocalls to more than half a billion phone numbers during a three-month span in 2021, using pre-recorded voice calls to press consumers to speak to a ‘warranty specialist’ about extending or reinstating their car’s warranty,” the FCC said.
“The FCC Enforcement Bureau’s investigation found that the Cox/Jones Enterprise apparently placed approximately 5,187,677,000 calls to 550,138,650 wireless and residential phones from January to March 2021, using 1,051,461 unique caller I.D. numbers – enough calls to have called each person in the United States 15 times during just those three months.”
Today’s announcement follows previous action taken by the FCC in July when the federal government agency ordered 8 U.S.-based voice service providers (Call Pipe, Fugle Telecom, Geist Telecom, Global Lynks, Mobi Telecom, South Dakota Telecom, SipKonnect, and Virtual Telecom) to stop offering their services to the operation behind these auto warranty scam robocalls within 48 hours.
As a result, the volume of robocalls linked to the auto warranty scam dropped by a massive 99%, according to communications company Robokiller.
In all, the number of car warranty robocalls plummeted from almost 1 billion in June to less than 7 million in September, amounting to just 1% of all robocalls, a severe drop compared to the previous 17%.
Today’s proposal follows an FCC order from May 2020 saying it will no longer warn robocallers before fining them for violating the law and harassing U.S. consumers.
The same order increased the maximum penalty for each intentional unlawful robocall to $10,000 and extended the timeframe within which robocallers can be fined to four years since they violated FCC rules.
FCC’s fight against malicious robocalls was prompted by a call to action issued by Attorney Generals from 35 states in 2018, who called on the agency to end the rising tide of robocalls that people are receiving on mobile and landline devices across the country.
“Today’s proposed fine is the largest such action in the FCC’s history largely because the FCC found that the robocallers met the agency’s criteria for egregious violations and thus deserved a substantially escalated proposed fine,” the FCC added on Wednesday.
Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com