Old business: Correction
A phrase in my statement before the third release quote should have read: "forgetting on purpose to
include a caller's name or return number
within the call content" .... More proof that men cannot multitask.
New business: Additional docs and some case background
The
FCC Forfeiture Order and a statement from Chair Jessica Rosenworcel lagged behind the press release, so I had no links "at press time" last week. The order recounts that the penalty and amount were proposed in December, and their math came from a "randomly selected subset of 33,333 calls the Enterprise placed". The debut
Schoolhouse Rock short was right; three really
is a magic number! The order goes on for two dozen pages naming names and drawing lines between them, detailing which gang members did the spoofing, which were lead generating, and so on. Copious footnotes reveal damning correspondence among the scammer partners, and also choice consumer complaints and tales of victim impact.
One story of their spoofing considered a "threat to public safety" helps inform the need for a good thrashin' behind the woodshed:
Quote:
The Enterprise intended to cause physical harm to the public. ... For example, the Bureau received a complaint from a surgeon who received an auto warranty robocall on his hospital-issued phone during a procedure. The calls used the area code and central office code of the hospital's emergency room, which caused him to interrupt the procedure to answer the call.
Sheriff Jessie meantime takes a victory lap for both the fat fine and securing a brisk 99% drop in trashy vehicle service contract calls. I'd say the parallels to email spam combat in a prior decade remain clear, when it was found that you could count on two hands the kingpins responsible for maybe four-fifths of the endless millions of all junk emails delivered. She also gives a hearty welcome to Hawaii and New Mexico attorneys general to their 46-state watchdog group. Think globally, act locally, yes?
I can almost hear the Chair holding her breath as she notes the customary passing of the collection baton to the Department of Justice, too often the stage where enforcement loses steam. Hardly for the first time she presses for Congressional authority to cut out the DoJ middleman and chase violators' assets directly. Personally I don't see the harm in augmenting FCC power to speed its reaction time to slippery defendants. My other ear senses the future echo of a certain wingnut obstructionist caucus, shrieking about "yet another weaponized agency robbing from job creators and censoring free speech" .... never mind that said shriekers and their families are not magically immune from the same trashy phone calls.
Rosenworcel's justifiable frustration takes some history review to explain, and it's not easy to condense:
Aaron "Mike" Jones has enjoyed a 22 year career in providing the means for automated sales calls, most of them illegal, likely none of them invited. He was already orchestrating numerous telemarketing companies and cronies as the Do Not Call Registry first went live, which their campaigns ignored. His golden goose was a dialer software platform for which he became an exclusive reseller and leased to fellow spammers. His gang's focus turned to auto "warranty" contract sales in 2006. When litigation blew that up, the group renamed and morphed to push alarm systems among a mixed bag of sales frauds. In 2011 a Jones crony launched the
infamous Local Lighthouse, which drove business owners bonkers with unauthorized Google SEO offers.
Parts of the Jones empire took damage from a Google trademark lawsuit and state law enforcement. By mid-2015 the FTC was sniffing around with investigative demands, having already settled with the "Home Security Company" subset. Jones and friends altered and adapted their operations many times over to sidestep punishment, even moving the headquarters into the palatial Jones residence in Laguna Beach for a time.
Roy Cox was in the early waves of credit reprice "lower interest rate" calls beginning circa 2008. He liked using false names in Caller ID like "Card Services" and "Credit Services", and shared Mike's disdain of the Do Not Call Registry. His multi-company California operation kept accomplice footprints in Argentina, Hungary, and Panama.
Cox took a consent judgment from the FTC early in 2013 with a $1,125,741 price tag. The FTC set a
$2,700,000 penalty on Jones in a default judgment signed at the end of May 2017. Each case imposed a permanent telemarketing ban on the two men, in both direct command and support roles, and made them subject to the customary long tail of compliance monitoring. To date neither defendant has paid a nickel, or left the phone spam business, or bothered to tell anyone about prior judgments during career moves.
Cox and Jones never paid their fines because they turned out empty pockets to the courts, the other customary event when spammer kingpins get busted. Yet Mike Jones keeps his Spanish Colonial Revival -- where the rent cracks $300K annually -- his credit cards, his swank car collection, and his Vegas casino accounts. Most or all his bills are covered in some fuzzy manner by his associates. Cox I suppose can't get a raise in his allowance from one of the cohort countries. Cox and Jones never quit carpet-bombing Americans with illegal phone calls because functional "compliance monitoring" takes form only after the next few hundred million calls are placed and reported. These are the recidivist shadow tycoons we needed to think about a couple years ago when the
House Ways and Means committee was tossing fits over a plan to compare bank account balances to tax filings.
These two wealthy paupers have done their level best to supply every generation with automated junk calls since the century began. Combine their multinational teams and friends into a carnival of crooks, and I'd bet there is no dubious call premise they've missed or American phone they have not rung. Somebody has to start tossing something heavier than Wiffle Balls at the midway milk bottles. Thus, thirteen months ago, the Rosenworcel-led FCC authorized pinching off carrier traffic downstream from the "Cox/Jones/Sumco Panama Operation", while Ohio AG Dave Yost led the prosecution in a same-day coordinated assault.
Yost Files Suit Alleging Massive Robocall Scheme - FCC Joins Fight in Related Action - 07 Jul 2022
FCC Takes Actions Against Auto Warranty Scam Robocall Campaign - FCC, 07 Jul 2022
I'm sure the defendants weren't happy with their network pipes clogging; do they now yawn off any talk of lasting punishment?
Mike Jones certainly did in October 2015, as he was grilled at FTC headquarters about his operation. Reportedly he was remarkably candid, and a little antsy to hurry along the inquiry. His being in trouble with the Feds for managing a colossal fraud juggernaut was like one of us standing in line at the DMV for an eye test ... one of those bureaucratic annoyances you endure so you can get back to work ... or your wine party schedule.
For once the drawn lines and arrows among players could not be clearer. So much gumshoe work has already been handed to the DoJ. Can we maybe break the catch-and-release cycle and keep 'em this time?
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