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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is going ahead with its record-setting $300 million fine against “the largest illegal robocall operation” it has ever investigated. Originally proposed in December 2022, the unprecedented fine of $299,997,000 takes into account the massive scope of the scam campaign that sold fake auto warranties to Americans.
According to the FCC, the crooks behind this campaign, led by Roy M. Cox and Aaron Michael Jones, have been running the operation since at least 2018. But they got excessively violent with their scam calls in 2021. The group made more than five billion robocalls within just three months in 2021, with over 550 million phone numbers receiving at least one call.
The total population of the US is 330 million, so every citizen received 15 robocalls on average during that period. That’s more than once a week, though the worst-affected Americans may have received multiple calls in a day. To avoid detection and trick users into answering the phone, the callers used more than a million different caller ID numbers. This helped them disguise the origin and intent of the call.
The robocall campaign also targeted healthcare workers and hospitals
The criminality of this campaign doesn’t end there, though. The multi-national enterprise behind the calls, which did business as Sumco Panama, Virtual Telecom, Davis Telecom, Geist Telecom, Fugle Telecom, Tech Direct, Mobi Telecom, and Posting Express, also sent pre-recorded voice calls and telemarketing calls to mobile phones without consent. The nefarious group even dialed numbers registered on the National Do Not Call Registry.
Moreover, the robocalls didn’t identify the caller at the start of the message and lacked a call-back number that could have allowed consumers to opt out of future calls. The FCC previously said that the group even spoofed the phone numbers of hospitals and called healthcare workers during a pandemic, causing confusion and chaos across “vital public safety institutions.”
The agency received complaints from consumers who described the calls as “incessant” and “harassment.” It concluded that this auto warranty scam robocall campaign met its criteria for “egregious violations” and deserves the proposed fine. In addition to the unprecedented fine, the FCC has also placed Cox and Jones, “two of the central players of the operation,” under lifetime bans against making telemarketing calls.
The FCC has already directed all US-based voice service providers to cease carrying traffic associated with the duo, as well as other members of the enterprise behind this campaign. The agency offered the parties a chance to respond, but they didn’t. As such, the regulatory body is proceeding with the proposed fine. Should they fail to pay the fine promptly, it will refer the matter to the US Department of Justice.
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