Arizona telecoms firm is sued by 48 states - 12 Billion Robo Calls

Arizona telecoms firm is sued by 48 states for making 21 BILLION 'harassing' robocalls - with some vulnerable households tricked into handing over life savings to scammers

- Avid Telecom allegedly facilitated 21 billion robocalls between 2018 and 2023
- It's claimed vulnerable and elderly customers were targeted by scam calls
- In 2022, around 250 million people were signed up to the Do Not Call Registry

An Arizona telecoms company is being sued for allegedly facilitating billions of 'harassing' robocalls, including many that appeared to be scams and spoofed numbers.
Attorneys general from every state apart from Alaska and South Dakota filed a lawsuit against Avid Telecom, accusing the company of making a total of 21 billion robocalls between 2018 and 2023.
The complaint claims that 7.5 billion of these calls were to people on the national Do Not Call Registry, in violation of consumer laws.

Seniors and vulnerable customers were allegedly targeted by scam calls about Social Security and Medicare - handing over millions of dollars to fraudsters. According to the lawsuit, filed by a coalition of attorneys general from 48 states, Avid Telecom also facilitated more than 8.4 million spoof calls pretending to be from government and law enforcement agencies and private companies.

Illegal robocalls - a call that plays a recorded message where the company has not got the recipient's permission - are the most common contact method for scammers.  The Do Not Call Registry, which around 250 million Americans are signed up to, is designed to field these unwanted calls.

In 2022, phone scams yielded an average loss of $1,400 per person, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Of the 21 billion calls facilitated by Avid Telecom in the US between December 2018 and January 2023, 93 percent of them lasted less than 15 seconds, according to a preliminary review of call records cited in the complaint.

Many of these calls purported to be from government agencies, the suit claims, or were scam calls about services such as Amazon, DirecTV and credit card interest rate reduction. The firm reportedly allowed callers to fake area codes, a process known as spoofing, to increase the odds of the recipient picking up the phone.

The attorneys general are also suing Avid Telecom owner Michael Lansky and the company's vice president, Stacey Reeves - claiming the company received 329 notifications about illegal robocalls before the suit was filed.

Company executives allegedly ignored the warnings from an industry group designated by the Federal Communications Commission to report spam calls.

- 'Defendants chose profit over running a business that conforms to state and federal law,' the lawsuit claimed.
- 'Defendants could have chosen to implement effective and meaningful procedures to prevent—or even significantly mitigate—the perpetration of illegal behavior onto and across Avid Telecom's network but chose not to do so.'

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the District of Arizona, where the firm is based.
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes alleged nearly 197 million of the robocalls were made to Arizona phone numbers between December 2018 and January 2023.

She said in a statement: 'Every day, countless Arizona consumers are harassed and annoyed by a relentless barrage of unwanted robocalls – and in some instances these illegal calls threaten consumers with lawsuits and arrest. 'More disturbingly, many of these calls are scams designed to pressure frightened consumers, often senior citizens, into handing over their hard-earned money.
'Such a blatant disregard for consumer protection laws will not be tolerated and violators of these laws will be held accountable.'

Neil Ende, Avid Telecom's outside legal counsel, told CBS News the company was disappointed that the attorneys general didn't communicate their concerns directly before filing the lawsuit.
'While the company always prefers to work with regulators and law enforcement to address issues of concern, as necessary, the company will defend itself vigorously and vindicate its rights and reputation through the legal process,' he said. 'Contrary to the allegations in the complaint, Avid Telecom operates in a manner that is compliant with all applicable state and federal laws and regulations,' Ende added.

'The company has never been found by any court or regulatory authority to have transmitted unlawful traffic and it is prepared to meet with the Attorneys General, as it has on many occasions in the past, to further demonstrate its good faith and lawful conduct.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212 ... -robocalls.html

I don't think I have seen this legal angle used on an operation of this size before. Since we often see posts written about "Go After the Telecoms", this will be worth reading and following.

Quote:

Neil Ende, Avid Telecom's outside legal counsel, told CBS News the company was disappointed that the attorneys general didn't communicate their concerns directly before filing the lawsuit.

Yet just a few paragraphs before that:

Quote:

The attorneys general are also suing Avid Telecom owner Michael Lansky and the company's vice president, Stacey Reeves - claiming the company received 329 notifications about illegal robocalls before the suit was filed.

Just makes me think of that old child's rhyme: "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!"

The latter quote of their legal counsel

Quote:

The company has never been found by any court or regulatory authority to have transmitted unlawful traffic...

makes you wonder "How many times have they been taken to court so far?"

Fantastic news!  I hope this gets the attention of other telecom companies.

From the article, this quote caught my eye:

"The Do Not Call Registry, which around 250 million Americans are signed up to, is designed to field these unwanted calls."

Unless the word "field" means something other than what I understand it to mean, this statement is false.

I agree, as far as I am aware, the National Do Not Call list acts as a deterrent in that the FTC provides telemarketers with the DNC registry and advises them of the consequences (which are rarely enforced in my opinion outside of this suit) for violating it by calling numbers on registry.

Ah, another misinformed troll.  The FTC/FCC sells the list to legitimate telemarketers who have to give up lots and lots of information on their company in order to buy it.  The fee for a single area code is $75.00.  The fee for all area codes is $20,740.00.  This of course is all something that you could have found out had you known how to use a search engine and had internet access.  https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-re ... y-increase-2023

Also, had you taken the time to look you would have found lots and lots of cases against illegal calls here:  https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/do-not-call-registry/enforcement

I might grant leniency to a British gossip rag journalist for mischaracterizing the function of a Yank "no call" registry, if only her own country lacked its substantially similar, and poorly enforced, Telephone Preference Service.

The Lansky name rang a bell, not so loud as his calls. For months he and a fellow phone spammer, the unfresh Prince Anand of One Eye LLC, have been pretending they're invisible to the FCC and the state AGs.

I might argue the One Eye story is the more historic. Anand is a rinse-repeat offender whose prior spam-slinger PZ/Illum Telecommunication was dissolved to sidestep law enforcement. His various impostor fraud calls have prompted numerous traceback inquiries since last summer. In mid-February the FCC asked downstream carriers to block his traffic and gave Anand ample time to come clean. Three weeks ago an unresponsive One Eye took the black eye of the FCC's first-ever upgrade from voluntary to mandatory carrier blocking of its garbage traffic. As I write, downstream carriers have ten days to comply. Or as Sheriff Jessie said in my daydreams to Ajit "Light Touch" Pai, "Yes, that is a ban-hammer and I do know how to use it".

    FCC Issues First-Ever RoboBlocking Order Against One Eye - FCC, 11 May 2023

The FCC's notices have characterized the One Eye calls as bank posing, often as "Bank of America", and the now shopworn surprise mail order premise, usually posing as Amazon. The latter calls claim in their canned lures that "a preauthorized order has been placed on your name", like that makes any literal sense. The FCC also notes that neither the phantom item nor a vendor name is identified. You have to "please press one" to get such minor details.

On a certain not-to be-named blocker service website I'm finding audio file examples of what sounds like this payload. They date from mid-December 2022 to mid-May this year. (See: 308-888-4898, 888-419-4479, 954-248-1820) There's another variant running currently with a poor text-to-speech voice which omits the dumb "placed on your name" and claims the order was placed with Amazon or Wal-Mart for a very consistent $1,599 and "will be DUH-lee-vered today". (See: 505-258-4257, 803-891-8795) Another version this month tries to behave like some Amazon fraud detector and flags "one preauthorized order placed for Apple MacBook Pro and AirPod Pro for a total amount of $1,499". (See: 269-256-6927) Hard to say if these are all One Eye factory issue or knockoffs.

If you like extra layers to your fraud stories, here's more. Both Anand and Lansky have been trade partners with John Spiller of JSquared Telecom and its prosecution-avoiding successor Great Choice Telecom. If none of those names rattle you, maybe you'll recall his massive "healthy and blessed" health insurance sales blitz a few years ago, and/or his high volume Drawling Croaker Girl pushing vehicle service contracts. ("uh-GAYY-ahn, press one to speak with a warranty specialist.") This is the same arrogant tool who went out of his way to target numbers listed on the DNC Registry, as a boost to sales conversions.

    https://800notes.com/forum/ta-179299149c01bec ... 133783103816597
    FCC Proposes Record $225 Million Fine for 1 Billion Spoofed Robocalls - FCC, Jun 2020

Back in November 2022 the state AG Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force (which really needs a more zippy name) issued extraordinary enforcement petitions against Avid and One Eye, which reproduced several text message confabs with Spiller. They plainly demonstrate that these spam racketeers knew their traffic was poisonous and that regulators didn't like it. They also suggest that these goons took their best naps during grade school English hours.

In this excerpt "onlywebleads" was Spiller and "Frank Murphy" was Anand's alias:

// BEGIN QUOTE //
onlywebleads - 1/11/2022 12:26:33 PM
  What type of content would you like to get out to the world
Frank Murphy - 1/11/2022 12:27:11 PM
  Crypto calls
  banking calls
  amazon calls
  microscoft calls
onlywebleads - 1/11/2022 12:29:55 PM
  Amazon calls for scams or other type of calls?
onlywebleads - 1/11/2022 12:30:34 PM
  And if they are for scams how can we mask them as real marketing so that they don’t get flagged by the FTC or fcc?
Frank Murphy - 1/11/2022 12:35:17 PM
  [. . .] yes for scam sir as you already know press 1 and robodialing is stopped so people started buying popup calls
Frank Murphy - 1/11/2022 12:35:38 PM
  and the people who generates this they getting good money for each call
// END QUOTE //

The Avid petition recounts that "Lansky agreed to help Spiller switch his traffic to a new company, Great Choice Telecom LLC, thus avoiding being shut down by the FCC. At the time, Lansky knew Spiller had several legal actions pending against him, and that Spiller was sending him suspect robocall traffic. Further, Lansky agreed to use an alias for Spiller during a credit check with another provider and possibly a business bank loan". In the copied exchanges between Spiller and Lansky it's evident they burnt much of their time bluffing and stalling the junk call investigators as traceback reports piled on. Mainly their response was to modulate fraud call traffic to what the oppressed market would bear, as I like to think Frederick Douglass might have said. "USTA" refers to USTelecom, which acts as a sort of traceback clearinghouse.

// BEGIN QUOTES //
Michael Lansky - 10/27/2021 12:51:06 PM
  John, You have been sent two USTA tickets with horrible calls that you have not answered
Michael Lansky - 10/27/2021 12:51:19 PM
  we have to block you
onlywebleads - 10/27/2021 12:51:29 PM
  Really I’ll answer them now I didn’t know I apologize
Michael Lansky - 10/27/2021 12:52:07 PM
  they are terrible tickets... the kind that will get everybody associated with them turned down
Michael Lansky - 10/27/2021 12:52:11 PM
  pure fraud
onlywebleads - 10/27/2021 12:52:29 PM
  I am cutting the client off now just saw them
. . . . . . . . . .
Michael Lansky - 10/27/2021 1:21:07 PM
  if another ticket hit.. and we didnt have you turned off... they would tell our vendors to turn us off
onlywebleads - 10/27/2021 1:21:15 PM
  Understood
Michael Lansky - 10/27/2021 1:21:30 PM
  the landscape got brutal
onlywebleads - 10/27/2021 1:21:47 PM
  I’m going to fix my traffic
Michael Lansky - 10/27/2021 1:21:51 PM
  lets just let is simmer for a bit
Michael Lansky - 10/27/2021 1:22:05 PM
  like a week or so...
onlywebleads - 10/27/2021 1:22:06 PM
  Give me a week to fix my s__t on my side I apologize
Michael Lansky - 10/27/2021 1:22:24 PM
  maybe start you back with some limited ports
// END QUOTES //

    Attorney General Todd Rokita files enforcement actions against two alleged illegal robocallers - Indiana AG, Nov 2022, has links to the Task Force enforcement petitions

Now if we can get them to sue Peerless Networks.  I get 3-4 scam / spam calls per day showing Peerless Networks -- voip, out of Chicago, as the originating voip carrier.

How many of those are spoofed or don't you know?

Unless you're beta-testing a traceback system for use by the public, you may be confusing "origination" with "last mile" carriers. Peerless, like the peers it denies acknowledgment, handles enough traffic to be confused with a spam harbor no matter how well it limits fraud calls. Maybe contact their engineers if you think they could filter better. The spam sources hide themselves behind layers of carrier path, and pretty much have to for spoofing to succeed.

Uh-oh, now you've done it, Mikey. This week Mr. Lansky is a step closer to joining his buddy Prince Anand in the FCC Banhammered Club. He's attracted a C&D nastygram, now routine in these cases, ordering him to pinch off his pipeline of canned health insurance sales calls, or else the FCC will greenlight total blocking of all Avid traffic downstream. His deadline is sometime today.

Lansky apparently has deemed these particular calls clean as fallen snow because his "customer who initiated the calls had prior consent, which it purportedly obtained through opt-in webpages". The FCC team isn't buying this defense.

    QUOTE: "Of the websites Avid identified as providing adequate disclosures, two are insufficient because they are devoid of any language stating that the consumer is agreeing to receive telemarking [sic] calls. To the extent the caller parties are disclosed elsewhere through a hyperlink, such disclosures are insufficient."

The two website URLs are helpfully provided by footnote. I'll mention them without the "com" TLD. "PrimeRewardSpot" is a cutesy affair loaded with stock photos and lacking a clear way to "claim access to the latest branded gift cards" as promised. The top ten "Top Content" links all concern Halloween, no doubt a hot topic now as families head for their lake and seaside vacations. Waaaaay at the mile-long home page bottom is a simple input area if you "Want to get in touch", asking for name, number, email, and a 300 character limit note. Nothing in sight about passing captured personal data to mass-dialing insurance hawkers, who also escape mention in the blog-let items.

"OnlyGreatJobs" refuses to load without Javascript and uses one's IP to generate apparent local employment offers from a variety of categories, like in those crinkly "news-paper" thingies with the serrated edges that Grandpa used to buy. The footer of each page displays a bunch of disclaimers, half of which are curiously devoted to Medicare Advantage plan sales. Just before that bit, we learn that surrender of personal data to "marketing partners" is needed "to gain access to the job listings", the clickbait of the site's namesake. Also required is agreement to lengthy service terms which are to my reading a damned spammer trap.

OGJ uses an expectedly broad and airtight "prior express written consent" clause which throws open the gates to any kind of contact from any of their "partners". It's your problem to stop any contact from a given partner individually. The "list of our third party advertising partners" is a single ugly paragraph running to about 135 entities from publishing, retail, fundraising, travel, concierge, and financial companies. I recognize a few of them as past repeat phone spam offenders. Your eyes are clearer than mine if you can spot a window for medical insurance in there. Besides which, pig piles of hyperlinked third party names have been disfavored by recent case law.

The real headshaker is that Only Great Spam expects to be sued for the antics of its partners, and thus sends all disputes naming any and all cronies to the lesser of the big-two private arbitration forums, "the other" triple-A.

Anyway, the gist of the FCC's objection is that it should be dead easy for people to determine when they are trading some of their long-term peace and sanity at home for the fleeting benefit of whatever some dopey lashed-up website offers. Hiding and obfuscating express consent material is dirty practice, usually deployed by shady actors whose real business never matches their websites' scope. At least when the Mafia runs a "front" shop they invest in countertops, bricks, and plate glass.

Avid Telecom cease and desist notice from FCC - 07 Jun 2023 (PDF)
(plain text copy)
FCC Looks to Cut Off Insurance-Related Robocall Campaign - press release landing

Oh, and speaking of another devil I've revisited, the FCC announced Wednesday that John Spiller of JSquared / Great Choice / Rising Eagle infamy still owes them $225 mil. He lost his motion to reconsider the FCC's Forfeiture Order, mainly because the facts of his "healthy and blessed" phone spam tsunami are not changing to carve a discount.

A good example detailing how corrupt the American Arbitration Assn. can be, as well as why mandatory arbitration is inherently unfair from a procedural viewpoint, may be found in O'Flaherty v. Belgum, 115 Cal.App.4th  1044 (2004). Notably, O'Flaherty did not directly address the anti-consumer bias infecting mandatory arbitration.

Thank you for spelling out the consent to receive future calls issue from the online inquiry perspective. The argument that vague and virtually hidden attempts to secure consent are ineffective should be analogous to those situations where an overseas lead generator, hiding behind an alias name, and not identifying the lead buyer who'll be calling in 24-48 hours, asks for consent to future calls. Further, if the lead generator did not have prior express consent, that first call never loses its illegality, and all subsequent calls remain illegal under the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine. Finally, another argument against consent is that one does not know exactly who is requesting consent, for the caller violated the TSR by not truthfully identifying the actual caller and actual lead buyer.

Weird case, that. Business contract disputes are the bread and butter for arb firms. An arbitrator applying invisible and unwritten clauses and state laws is a fabulist who should change careers to tabloid reporter or political lobbyist.

I do need to partway rebut your example as coming from the worst days of private arb, a few years prior to the infamous National Arbitration Forum getting "blowed up real good" by its home state's heroic AG Lori Swanson. Anecdotally, I know AAA is to be avoided if fairness matters. I think primarily its cheap rates have made it popular. I have patronized JAMS enough to confirm its reputation for obeying its own rules and retaining (some) very fair arbitrators. Milage and damage may vary. The chances of drawing a slanted judge versus slanted arbitrator break even, I suspect. The disadvantage of arb is a lack of public record, but then NDA and sealed filings are overused in the courts to compensate.

I could see the Venn diagram crossover between hiding consent terms in plain fog and the lead generation shell game. It's just gallingly unfair to form an agreement with a "fill the blank later" business name, an agreement too insane to legally enforce.

In my struggle to remember the goofy terms for website design pit traps, I ran across a "small victory" story from February. A disabled woman won her TCPA claims when the "marketing partner" assumed but couldn't prove her given consent. The judge found that a TCPA-killer disclosure in low contrast and tiny type and placed well below the shiny action button didn't pass muster. I'm just sorry the lady didn't assert claims for autodialing or canned audio to pad her award. Also like the Lansky case, I have trouble finding the "reasonable expectation" of sales calls from disabled benefit middlemen on a garish "Super-Sweepstakes" website.

Said goofy terms for online consent capture are "browsewrap", seemingly favored by those who entrap, and "clickwrap", where design elements make casual blind agreements harder.

In Novel Case, Federal Judge OKs TCPA Class Action Over 'Textbook Example' of Website Hiding Consent Language - ALM, Feb 2023
Gaker v. Citizen's Disability, LLC - CourtListener, as of Apr 2023

Document 83, dated Feb. 6, 2023 in the CourtListener link is a *very* interesting read.  It's a .PDF of a Court Order, and is not hidden behind a paywall.

Three years of litigation, for a lousy $3500.