FCC cracks down on scam “auto warranty” robocalls

Tired of getting robocalls about your car’s extended warranty? So are the feds.

The Federal Communications Commission this week ordered carriers to stop letting scammers use their telecom networks for auto-guaranteed scams, expanding a crackdown on robocalls that has become the agency’s top priority. agency

“Consumers are impatient, and I stand with them,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement Thursday.

According to regulators, the bogus auto-guarantee calls, which aim to trick consumers into giving up their personal information, originate from a ring run by Roy Cox Jr., Aaron Michael Jones and the Sumco Panama companies. This group of about a dozen people in the United States and abroad allegedly made 8 billion robocalls to Americans since 2018 and is still making millions of illegal calls today, the FCC said. Cox, Jones and 20 other defendants have also been sued by the Ohio attorney general.

Earlier this month, the FCC authorized carriers to block these scam calls; now, the government requires them to do so.

“The Office of Enforcement has directed all US voice service providers to take all necessary steps to avoid carrying robocall traffic from the Cox/Jones/Sumco Panama operation,” the FCC said. It is investigating these calls to break the law, the agency added.

The FCC identified eight carriers it said were responsible for carrying those calls: Fugle Telecom, Geist Telecom, Global Lynks, Mobi Telecom, SipKonnect, South Dakota Telecom and Virtual Telecom. It sent cease and desist letters to the eight, to which they did not respond, the FCC said.

Consumers lost nearly $30 billion to scam calls last year, and robocalls were the biggest source of grief: Americans filed 12,000 complaints about them with the Federal Communications Commission.

Regulators have had some success curtailing robocalls. Last year, the FCC began requiring carriers verify traffic on their networks, cutting those scam calls in half.

At the same time, fraudsters are becoming more sophisticated and are shifting their focus to bot texts, which have it exploded in popularity as a way to trick unsuspecting people.