BOISE, ID – Attorney General Raúl Labrador announced phase two of Operation Robocall Roundup, focusing on four major voice providers to combat illegal robocalls.
The Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force has directed Inteliquent, Bandwidth, Lumen and Peerless to stop transmitting suspected illegal robocalls.
“Idahoans are frustrated with scammers swindling families by pretending to be the IRS, Social Security or any other legitimate entity,” said Labrador in a release. “My Consumer Protection Division works hard to educate people on how to avoid scams, but we need to hold telecom providers accountable for allowing that illegal traffic.”
The new phase targets larger companies with significant roles in the U.S. telecom ecosystem. These companies reportedly transmit hundreds of thousands, even millions, of suspected illegal robocalls.
According to the release, Inteliquent received 9,712 traceback notices since 2019, with an estimated 450 million Amazon/Apple imposter robocalls and 1.425 billion SSA/IRS imposter robocalls. Bandwidth had 3,060 notices, Peerless 5,662 and Lumen 7,265, each with millions of estimated imposter robocalls.
These companies have a greater responsibility to reject calls from known bad actors. Despite warnings, they continue to transmit suspected illegal robocalls into American homes, Labrador said.
Phase one of the operation saw significant success. Warning letters to 37 companies led to 13 being removed from the FCC’s Robocall Mitigation Database, 19 stopping their involvement in traceback results and four terminating high-risk customer accounts, the release added.
“The sheer volume of these scam calls and texts are staggering and shows that telecom fraud is big business. Our efforts are working, but I won’t stop fighting for the people – often seniors – who get exploited,” said Labrador.
