Robocall flood raises suspicions

288 million insurance pitches in October seen as red flag

A robocall campaign in October bombarded Americans with an estimated 288 million calls pitching health insurance, according to the call-blocking smartphone app YouMail, contributing to a record 5.7 billion robocalls made nationwide last month.

Robocalls are a tactic of mass outreach that can take many forms — from legitimate reminders to pay bills to scams that mimic local numbers in a bid to swindle those who answer a call.

To experts, the October barrage of health insurance calls illustrates the country’s continued struggle with unwanted and unsolicited phone calls, and its need for new legal tools.

Telecom giants such as AT&T and Verizon this year have started implementing anti-robocall technology that can help people spot fake numbers.

Regulators in Washington also have stepped up their efforts: Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are set to unveil as soon as this week a new, bipartisan bill that will empower law enforcement agencies to get even tougher on the worst offenders, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.

The October spike in health insurance-related robocalls, which coincided with the annual fall period when people choose their coverage, highlights the complexities.

While the calls may be offering perfectly legitimate services, they also appeared to come from a single originator that cycled through a series of names, such as “Executive Health” and “Whitestone Health,” according to people tracking the campaign, delivering a prerecorded pitch using the same male voice.

Those bothered by the calls said they never consented to receiving them, raising the possibility that the calls violate federal law.

Long-sought improvements to the law can’t come fast enough, experts say, pointing to the fact that robocallers have become more sophisticated — and pervasive — even in the face of heightened vigilance by government and industry.

“They’re not going to go away if we don’t pass the bill,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., one of the authors of new legislation.

A BIGGER PROBLEM

The act of automated dialing isn’t illegal. But decadesold federal law generally requires those that ring consumers with prerecorded messages to first obtain the consent of those called. Callers also must give people the ability to withdraw such consent later.

Scammers, of course, aren’t inclined to follow the rules or adhere to other restrictions, such as the federal “Do Not Call” list, which is supposed to protect people from receiving unwanted telemarketing messages. And some criminals have continued to devise new ways to outsmart telecom companies, contributing to the uptick in robocalls placed to consumers last month.

“As more and more people discover how easy it is,” said Alex Quilici, the chief executive of YouMail, “you’ve got a bigger and bigger problem.”

But finding and penalizing the worst robocall offenders has been a major challenge for the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, the two agencies that oversee the issue.

The agencies have secured record fines against those that call without permission using fake numbers, but they

sometimes fail to collect on those penalties, according to lawmakers, legal experts and public reports.

Such investigations are hard enough to carry out in the first place, and chasing scammers over complex telephone networks — and across national borders — is never easy. Adding to the agencies’ headaches, federal officials sometimes are required to issue warnings to the initiators of the calls before they can even consider levying fines under the government’s antirobocall law, known as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

House and Senate lawmakers have homed in on the weak spots in the law in similar legislative proposals that each chamber introduced, and passed, earlier this year. Democrats and Republicans announced Friday that they had reached a compromise on a bill that would give the FCC and FTC more time to pursue investigations and greater ability to issue punishments, according to a draft obtained

earlier this month. It could put the bill on track to pass before the end of the year.

“The TRACED Act is an important step in the effort to stop robocalls by ending spoofed calls in which fraudsters conceal their true identity,” said Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., referring to the Senate version of the proposal written with Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. The House bill is backed by Pallone and Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore.

FRAUD POTENTIAL

Spikes in robocalls — such as the one observed by YouMail last month — typically accompany major national moments, such as the annual April tax-filing deadline or health care open enrollment. This year, at least six states have warned people about health care-related robocalls, fearing they threaten consumers with the potential for fraud or insurance that covers far less than they anticipated. Robocalls similarly have plagued other elements of the health care system, imperiling

hospitals, doctors and patients, the Post found.

“The quantity of robocalls is alarming,” wrote Dean Cameron, the director of the Idaho Department of Insurance, in a public notice in May, adding that residents should always “be wary of any promises of cheap and comprehensive health insurance sold over the phone.”

Insurance experts, telecom executives and federal regulators said they could not determine whether the recent barrage of calls seemingly coming from Executive Health, Whitestone Health or other similarly named groups are illegal or offering shoddy coverage. But experts at two call-blocking apps, YouMail and Nomorobo, said the evidence suggests that the calls are linked — and that some of the tactics they adopted are

highly suggestive that something suspicious or illegal may be afoot.

In October, YouMail discovered that a single originator may have placed an estimated 288 million robocalls about health insurance. The company produces its tallies by measuring the number of robocalls captured by app users, then using that as a sample to compute a national figure. YouMail then provided the information to USTelecom, a trade group for the industry that tries to trace such campaigns to stop them. USTelecom since has provided information under subpoena to the FCC, an official at the organization said.

Aaron Foss, the founder of Nomorobo, similarly noticed something amiss after analyzing the messages flagged by its users and its own internal

systems. His firm helps monitor robocall campaigns with what it calls a “honeypot” — phone numbers it owns but aren’t in use by real people. Numbers associated with the health insurance campaign regularly rang his sting operation, he said, a sign it could be breaking federal rules.

“I can guarantee no one has been given express written permission to call them,” said Foss, pointing out that federal law requires consent in this case. “If companies are calling into our honeypot, that’s usually a bad sign all around.”

While those interviewed for this report said they did not consent to being called, it’s unclear whether they had inadvertently agreed to receive the calls by signing on to terms of service or other means.