Regulator seeks $13 million fine for racist robocalls

A man who telecom regulators say was apparently behind a barrage of racist robocalls in six states — sowing hate in response to the killing of an Iowa college student by an unauthorized immigrant and a white supremacist’s murder trial in Virginia — is facing a proposed fine of nearly $13 million by the Federal Communications Commission.

Scott Rhodes, who antihate groups say is a white supremacist and runs the website Road to Power, was “apparently” responsible for more than 6,000 robocalls in 2018 “with the intent to cause harm,” the FCC said Thursday.

The commission said that in addition to Iowa and Virginia, Rhodes targeted people in California, Georgia, Florida and Idaho with the robocalls.

Most recently, Road to Power took credit for a flurry of racist robocalls made to Columbia University employees after Tessa Majors, a Barnard College freshman, was killed in a mugging in December in New York City. The calls promoted a white supremacist ideology.

The FCC said it traced 827 spoofed robocalls that were made to residents in Brooklyn, Iowa, in August 2018 after the slaying of the University of Iowa student, Mollie Tibbetts, by an unauthorized farmworker from Mexico. Tibbetts, whose murder has been invoked by President Trump in his push for a border wall, was from the town.

The commission said Rhodes used an online calling platform to manipulate caller ID information to display local phone numbers as the source of the calls. That practice violates the Truth in Caller ID Act, the commission said.

“Preying on the tragedy, the calls contained inflammatory prerecorded messages and a woman’s voice apparently intended to impersonate Mollie Tibbetts saying ‘kill them all.’ ” said Ajit Pai, the commission’s chairman.

Pai said the caller had been referring to unauthorized immigrants from Mexico.

Attempts to reach Rhodes, who has used several aliases, were unsuccessful.

The commission said Rhodes made 2,023 robocalls in 2018 to residents of Charlottesville, Va., blaming the mayor and police chief for the murder of Heather Heyer in 2017. Heyer was killed when James Fields Jr., who had traveled to Virginia to participate in a white supremacist rally, steered his car into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators. Fields pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.