FCC proposes record breaking $300 million penalty against Robocaller

Today, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission recommended a record breaking $300 million penalty against an operation to make robocalls from auto warranties. This operation made more than 550,000,000 calls across the United States.

Since at least 2018, this operation has been run by Roy Cox, Jr. and Michael Aaron Jones. It was also the biggest robocall operation that the FCC had ever examined.

The robocall lead generation program was created to market vehicle service contracts. It was deceptively promoted as car warranties through phone calls that were described as “incessant” or “harassment.”

These robocalls were also sent to healthcare workers in the COVID epidemic. They spoof hospital phone numbers and encourage people to block hospitals’ phones.

The FCC that “This robocall scam made over 5 billion robocalls and more than half-a-billion phone numbers in a 3-month span of 2021. It used prerecorded voice call to pressure consumers to talk to a warranty specialist about their vehicle’s warranty extension or reinstating it.”

The FCC Enforcement Bureau found that Cox/Jones Enterprise made approximately 5187,677,000 calls from 550,138650 residential and wireless phones between January 2021 to March 2021 using 1,051,461 unique calling IDs. Numbers – Enough calls to call each American 15 times in three months.

This announcement is the latest in a series of actions , 8 U.S.-based Voice Service Providers (Call Pipe and Fugle Telecoms, Geist Telecoms, Global Lynkss, Mobi Telecoms, South Dakota Telecoms, SipKonnects, and Virtual Telecoms) were ordered to cease offering services to this operation that was behind the auto warranty scam robocalls.

According to Robokiller , this resulted in a drop of nearly 99% in robocalls related to the scam auto warranty.

All in all, almost one billion car warranty robocalls were received in June. In September, that number dropped to under 7 million. That’s a drastic drop from the 17% previously.

The FCC’s May 2020 order states that it and then fin them for harassing U.S. customers.

This order also increased the penalty for every intentional illegal robocall from $10,000 to $5,000 and extended the period within which they can be punished to 4 years after violating FCC rules.

The by 35 Attorney Generals representing 35 states prompted FCC to fight malicious robocalls. They called upon the agency to stop the growing tide of robocalls being sent to landline and mobile devices throughout the country.

The FCC said Wednesday that today’s proposed fine was the biggest in FCC history. This is largely due to the fact that FCC determined the robocallers had violated the agency’s criteria and therefore deserved an substantially increased proposed fine.