FCC slaps robocaller with $ 120M fine
Agency says Florida network made 96M calls in three months
The Federal Communications Commission has levied its largest fine ever, targeting a Florida- based robocall network it says was responsible for nearly 100 million calls over the last three months of 2016.
The agency on Thursday proposed a $ 120 million fine against Adrian Abramovich of Miami, alleging his operation, doing business as Marketing Strategy Leaders, made 96 million spoofed robocalls during the period in which the FCC investigated. Of those calls, about 90% were made to wireless phones, with 10% to landline phones.
The calls used “neighborhood spoofing” technology to include local area codes and the first three numbers of the recipient’s own phone number to encourage people to answer the calls.
Upon answering, recipients would hear a recorded message asking them to press 1 to hear about vacation deals from travel companies such as Marriott, Expedia, Hilton and Trip Advisor. Callers were then transferred to call centers in Mexico, where live operators would try to sell them vacation packages at Mexican timeshare facilities not affiliated with the companies in the recorded messages. “Unfortunately, many unsuspecting Americans are deceived into taking the bait,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said. Abramovich “found it profitable to send to these live operators the most vulnerable Americans, typically the elderly, to be bilked out of their hard- earned money. Many consumers spent from a few hundred up to a few thousand dollars on these ‘ exclusive’ vacation packages.”
This robocall network also disrupted an emergency medical paging provider, he said. By overloading that paging network, Abramovich could have delayed medical care “making the difference between a patient’s life and death,” Pai said.
Robocalls rank as the top consumer complaint received by the FCC, officials said.
Abramovich is charged with violating the Truth in Caller ID Act, which prohibits the deliberate falsification of caller ID information to defraud and harm consumers. The FCC also issued a citation for apparent violations of robocall limits and federal wire fraud to Abramovich. He has 30 days to respond to the charges. Attempts to reach Abramovich were unsuccessful.