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Communications

FCC Proposes Record $225 Million Fine For Massive Robocall Campaign (reuters.com) 64

Posted by msmash from the for-what-it-is-worth dept.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Tuesday voted unanimously to propose a record-setting $225 million fine against Texas-based health insurance telemarketers for allegedly making approximately 1 billion illegally spoofed robocalls. From a report: The order names two individuals using business names including Rising Eagle and JSquared Telecom. The FCC said robocalls falsely claimed to offer health insurance plans from major health insurance companies such as Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, and UnitedHealth Group.
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FCC Proposes Record $225 Million Fine For Massive Robocall Campaign More

FCC Proposes Record $225 Million Fine For Massive Robocall Campaign

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  • Getting off cheap (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @02:58PM (#60165166)

    propose ... $225 million fine ... for allegedly making approximately 1 billion illegally spoofed robocalls.

    Hmm... That's $0.255 / call. Now we know the legal costs of running a robocall business. Can the next guy just do pay-as-you-go?

    I propose taking them, along with convicted identity thieves, out behind the chemical sheds ...

    • ROI (Score:2)

      by DogDude ( 805747 )
      Well, to determine if this is "cheap" or not, we'd have to know the other costs of running this scam, vs the potential profit for them. If it takes them 100 spam calls to make one sale, and that sale is a $20 commission to them, then that's a new loss of $5 on every 100 calls. We don't know if they're getting off "cheap" or not, unfortunately.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Guspaz ( 556486 )

        We know they're getting off cheaply because the FCC never actually collects any of these fines. There was a report a year or two ago that said that over the past few years, the FCC had levied over $200 million in fines, but collected less than $7,000. Either they can't collect because the scammers weasel out of it, or they settle, or they just don't bother enforcing them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by taustin ( 171655 )

          Or they can't collect what the scammers don't have. Telemarketing isn't a particularly profitable business, as a rule.

      • on the other hand if you get 1 in 10,000 hits in an extract-savings-from-old-people scam, then the average pay out per call is pretty
          good.

        Doing a billion calls, if you can push penny-stocks around with some bad advice then it's potentially billions of dollars until the SEC, FTC, and FCC all come after you at once.

    • That's what's missing from TFA - how much did these guys make from selling insurance? If the fine was less than the profit, then as you state it's just a cost of doing business. The fine needs to be more than whatever money they made from making these robocalls.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )
      Puts it on the level of mailing ($0.259 if more than 200 go to the same zipcode + a few cents for bulk postcard printing, a little less if they drop ship to the local post offices, significantly less if they saturate carrier routes).

      As long as robo calling is less effective than mailing postcards (I suspect it is, but I do not know) it will likely be enough to eliminate it.

      The bigger issue is if there is money there to recover. If people are already paid their bonuses/salaries and this bankrupts the company

    • They probably aren't making 0.25c

    • This is just the marketing arm of the underlying business, which is health insurance. That's where the real scam is. Spoofed robocalls are actually one of the least scummy things that have been done to promote it.

    • I propose taking them, along with convicted identity thieves, out behind the chemical sheds ...

      You mean, scare them just before you let them go? [wikiquote.org]

  • ... will that fine be collected?

    • Re:But... (Score:4, Informative)

      by timholman ( 71886 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @03:20PM (#60165282)

      ... will that fine be collected?

      Probably not a dime. The company will go bankrupt, the assets hidden, and the principals of the company will go on to the next scam. Of if they are personally fined, they'll pay a token amount each month. It's just the cost of doing business.

      Put the people in charge into federal prison for a few years, and then you might accomplish something.

      • the principals of the company will go on to the next scam.

        Put the people in charge into federal prison for a few years, and then you might accomplish something.

        Exactly: or make them pay the fine personally -- the only way to stop this sort of thing is to fine them so hard that their daughters can no longer go to pony club.

  • Wrong penalty (Score:5, Insightful)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @03:02PM (#60165198)
    Jail, not fine.
    Or both. But primarily jail.
  • Wow! The government is doing something good!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • It's Like a Whole Other Country.

      • It's Like a Whole Other Country.

        Yeah, a 3rd World country.

        I've been there, it's at or near the bottom of practically every quality-of-life metric there is.

        • I haven't been there yet, but I've known some people who lived there until death, and some who left. Are the quality of life metrics you mention of the material variety, or do any of them measure anything else?
          I've lived in and visited many other so-called "God forsaken" places, and have found that most people there intentionally accept the bargain of less material wealth, poor infrastructure, and poor services, in exchange for freedom and simplicity.

    • In their defense, until now Texas courts were as anti-consumer as it's remotely possible on US soil.

  • Let's see them actually collect the money.

    • It's a U.S. company (the summary says they're based in Texas) so if they don't pay the government can straight up seize assets that they may have.

      • Have fun seizing cloud servers that are rented by the hour. That's about all the equipment you need to run a massive VoIP call network.

        I hope investigative accountants can trace where the money went and find it all.

  • Now... about those ... (Score:4, Informative)

    by rnturn ( 11092 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @03:17PM (#60165268)

    ... people who've "been trying to contact me" about my car warranty.

    A quick visual check of my call blocker database shows that about a 3rd of the phone spam I get is about that crap.

  • I got a call this morning, one yesterday, one 3 days ago... Yep fines are working. Today's sounded Indian. I always punch thru to a person when I have time and dead air them. Costs them a few pennies of operator time. Sometimes priceless to hear them keep saying hello.

  • why spoof phone numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kpoole55 ( 1102793 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @03:20PM (#60165284)

    by which I ask Why is there even the ability to spoof a phone number in the first place? It just to be used for illegitimate purposes. how about removing the spoofing ability from the switch so these callers are easier to find?

    • Automatic Number Identification is meant to be the replacement for CallerID... but is having just as many problems as IPv6 trying to get the problems out of IPv4.

      • ANI has been around since...forever. Without it the telcos would never have been able to bill calls correctly to the right number. You don't know what you're talking about.

      • ANI is not the replacement for callerID. CallerID is a system that sometimes transmits ANI information. ANI dates back to the dialup BBS days and isn't replacing anything.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

      by which I ask Why is there even the ability to spoof a phone number in the first place?

      So that Company X can have their call center in India or the Philippines call you and make it look like they are calling you from their US based headquarters.

    • Because telephone companies make a shit-ton of money from these calls passing through their networks. That's all. We have to suffer so that the wealthy can become slightly wealthier.

      I've got a crazy idea: why don't we drop all this divisive fighting with one another and unite against our real enemies: the evil sociopathic elites who rule us against our will.

    • It exists for legitimate reasons.

      Take for example a business with five phone numbers:
      555-1210, 555-1211, 555-1212, 555-1213, 555-1215

      You only publish the main number 1210. You want any calls made from all your numbers to show your 'main' number so people don't have to worry about recognizing five numbers when you call them.

      Therefore the 'back' four numbers all spoof your primary phone number and you build recognition for your phone number.

      Another example is those emergency phones you used to see at the poo

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      CID (Caller Identification) = a number provided by the caller for informative purposes.
      ANI (Automatic Number Identification) = the source and route the phone call is traversing.

      It is exceptionally rare for Caller ID to actually be spoofed.
      "Spoofed" is only when some phone company prevents the caller from displaying precisely what the caller asked.
      So far as I know, only a couple cell providers override the caller ID info sent by the caller.

      If I call you and ask for the caller ID to be your number, that isn't

    • If you have Google voice, or have ever heard of Google Voice, you know that an incoming number (technically called a Direct Inward Dial number, or DID), isn't the same thing as a handset.

      I have three numbers that I can answer. Two of those might also be answered by someone else. For example one is crisis hotline, answered by volunteers. Whichever volunteer is available picks up or calls back.

      I might answer a call on my VoIP phone, I might answer on my mobile phone.

      The "phone number" (DID) represents which

  • Now, if they'd only take care of that robocall that thanks me for "using Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and Amex"...

  • Impacts beyond annoying telemarketing calls (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ravenscar ( 1662985 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2020 @03:21PM (#60165292)

    I suspect it was these groups (or ones operating similarly) that started calling me about health insurance around 2 years (maybe a bit more) ago. They kept picking numbers that had the same area code and first three digits as my own. This has been a tactic of telemarketers for quite some time so I just ignore these calls. What I couldn't ignore was the fact that they were spoofing my number to call others. I kept getting call after call from people threatening to submit by info to the state attorney general if I didn't cease calling them. I called all of these people and let them know, like them, I was receiving similar calls from spoofed numbers and that they were clearly using my number to trick others. Everyone was cool once I explained, but I had to deal with quite a volume of angry messages and calls thanks to the spoofers. I'd love to send them a bill for time spent at my hourly rate.

    • Yeah, it looks like somebody's got a "Phone CDN" set up... trying to call from as many local numbers to the target as possible, lessening the intercept chances.

    • What I couldn't ignore was the fact that they were spoofing my number to call others. I kept getting call after call from [annoyed people who had been given my number]

      Do you use a device that sends an Intercept Special Information Tone to spoof telemarketers' predictive dialers into thinking your line is not in service? Or perhaps does your number have a low last-four-digits value?

      I've done a little checking and found that the spoofed number is almost always one that is out of service. I've been assuming

      • Thanks for the info. It's very interesting and I appreciate you taking the time to reply. I don't think this applies to my case as this number has been in service for 15 years (at least) and I don't use an SIT.

  • Stay tuned... we're about to start getting election robocalls which are perfectly legal.

    • Since it doesn't matter which one you pick, you could start making a game out of it to get some entertainment out of that election circus at least. Keep tabs on who wastes more of your time with their constant pestering and vote for the other guy.

  • Please, now do the same for the car warranty robocalls.

  • If they call to "falsely" advertise products/services, then what are their calls really for? To steal information?

  • Isn't that a thing called fraud?

    Don't fine them, put them in jail!

    • US corporations never have to worry about fraud as long as they are making money. It's even OK to kill people if they are making money. You are expendable if some corporate entity can turn a profit from you, alive, dead or maimed.

  • Hmmm.

    This could be a fuster-cluck...

  • Oh, look, you fined a US company. How about going after the foreign ones?

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