Nothing has been able to kill scam robocalls — not federal regulation, not individual state lawsuits, not private software. Each effort has made a dent, but the unwanted calls keep on coming, much to the consternation of Americans on the receiving end.
Now, all 50 state attorneys general, Republicans and Democrats, have come together through a newly formed task force to go after U.S. telecommunications companies that allow robocalls originating overseas to reach their customers.
Stopping nuisance calls from foreign countries has been particularly challenging. The AGs have put telecom companies on notice that they must stop the scam calls before they go through to customers, or face prosecution. Experts say that strategy just might work.
“Technology has advanced to the point so AGs can see when telecom carriers are carrying illegal traffic,” said Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, a robocall-blocking software company that keeps track of robocalling in the United States.
“The problem has been that the (Federal Communications Commission) fines someone … one at a time, or one AG shuts down a carrier,” he said. “Now, it’s 50 going after them and 50 court proceedings and 50 fines. I’m optimistic that this will make some impact. Enforcement really is key.”
Further, Quilici said, by coordinating lawsuits, the attorneys general make it more expensive for the robocaller companies, which earlier had calculated the cost of individual court cases into their cost of doing business. “The key thing you want to do is raise the cost for the robocaller,” he said.
As an example, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein in January sued telephone service provider Articul8 for allegedly facilitating illegal and fraudulent telemarketing phone calls in his state. Stein alleges the company sent 65 million fraud calls to his constituents in just a few months.
Now, Stein, a Democrat, and GOP attorneys general Todd Rokita of Indiana and Dave Yost of Ohio are leading the effort to coordinate similar suits against telecom providers on a 50-state (plus the District of Columbia) basis by forming an Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force.
As its first act, the task force this month issued 20 investigative requests to 20 companies that are “allegedly responsible for a majority of foreign robocall traffic,” Stein said.
Rokita, in a news release, pointed out that robocalls “aren’t just a Hoosier problem. They are a nationwide problem.” He put the telecom industry on notice that if it “won’t police itself, this unprecedented task force will.”
State attorneys general have taken some coordinated actions in the past few years, such as calling on internet resellers like eBay Inc. to stop selling fake COVID-19 vaccination cards and raising concerns about illegal alcohol sales online. And together, they’ve pushed companies to beef up anti-robocalling technology.
But mostly the attorneys general have split along party lines. The Republican AGs association, for example, was on the winning side in its “friend of the court” brief supporting a lawsuit in Pennsylvania arguing that religious institutions that ban same-sex foster parents should be allowed to take part in Philadelphia’s foster care system.
And the Democratic AGs issued a statement this month praising President Joe Biden’s executive order aimed at protecting some abortion rights.
But they all hate robocalls.
“I think we can give all the credit to the robocallers,” said former Maine Attorney General James Tierney, founder of StateAG.org, an educational group. “They have been able to do the politically impossible feat: They have been able to unite the attorneys general when they don’t unite on anything else. I don’t know who they are, or what country they are in, but everybody hates robocallers.
