@fne8w2ah "Two of the central players of the operation, Roy M. Cox and Aaron Michael Jones, were under lifetime bans against making telemarketing calls following lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission and State of Texas."
WHY AREN’T THEY IN JAIL
How much money were they making off telemarketing that they were fucking banned for life from doing it and they still did it?
Also:
At the time, the FTC said that Cox was issued "a $1.1 million civil penalty that will be suspended due to his inability to pay.
Oh ok, so this fine for more money will certainly mean something...
I feel like we have places to put people who ruin society. Was it mail, rail, shale? I dunno, set them free and bring me a coffee, bailiff.
I feel like at this point we just go full Spanish Inquisition and burn these motherfuckers at the stake.
Political theatre to make it seem like they're doing something about the issue. When in reality, nothing changes.
Anyone got a number?
I have some very important information for them regarding expiration of their vehicle warranties.
That would be a good penalty for them. Their phone number(s) must always be public so anyone can call them whenever they want.
I don't understand why these people weren't in jail already!
Yeah, I don't get why this seemed to be such a huge undertaking. The phone companies certainly know who's making all these calls on their networks.
The phone companies certainly know who’s making all these calls on their networks.
Exactly. If the networks faced consequences for knowingly routing and profiting off these illegal phone calls they would stop fairly quickly.
Cause they were complicit.
i assume someone was making money off this, and has made enough money to get rid of them so other people don't make money...
It’s kind of amazing how we’d been answering phones when they rang for a century, until a handful of greedy wankers like these guys and the offshore “calling from Windows” folks started doing their thing a few years ago. Now only the elderly and folks required to answer for work even contemplate picking a call up.
I don't answer my work phone anymore. Our company uses teams. So if it's not a teams call, you can't make me answer the phone.
I haven't had a legitimate phone call on my work line in the last 8 years. Anyone who truly needs to talk to me has my cell number and several other ways to contact me.
I got so many spam calls I considered changing the number I've had for over 2 decades. So obnoxious.
I wouldn’t recommend that. I did it once for the same reason and got just as many spam calls plus debt collectors trying to reach the person who had the number before me.
It's not your number. It's all the numbers.
Ya. Like this is gonna do anything. Why are we not going after the carriers? They are the ones that can do something. If you call me from a number I don’t have in my phone, I 100% will not answer. If a voicemail isn’t left or a text isn’t sent stating who you are and what you want, you will never hear my voice. It sucks that I have to screen my phone. I receive 5-10 spams calls per day some months, and other months there’s less. Not sure why. Anyway, point is it sucks and we need to force the carriers to help end this nonsense.
Shred all robo caller companies and give the owners jail time.
Fines aren’t near enough at this point, we need public executions at a minimum to put a dent in this problem.
No killing them is too extreme. Put them in a room with 1,000 different types of ringing telephones for a week.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
"An international network of companies violated federal statutes and the Commission's regulations when they executed a scheme to make more than five billion robocalls to more than 500 million phone numbers during a three-month span in 2021, including violating federal spoofing laws by using more than one million different caller ID numbers in an attempt to disguise the true origin of the robocalls and trick victims into answering the phone," the FCC said.
"Since at least 2018, this enterprise operated a complex scheme designed to facilitate the sale of vehicle service contracts under the false and misleading claim of selling auto warranties," the FCC said.
"Two of the central players of the operation, Roy M. Cox and Aaron Michael Jones, were under lifetime bans against making telemarketing calls following lawsuits by the Federal Trade Commission and State of Texas."
The FCC said it took action to block the robocalling scheme last year by directing "all US-based voice service providers to cease carrying traffic associated with certain members of the enterprise.
The FCC coordinated last year's action with the Ohio attorney general's office, which filed a lawsuit against Jones, Cox, and others involved in the alleged robocalling scheme.
Cox was banned from telemarketing in a 2013 settlement with the FTC, which accused him of sending "illegal robocalls offering credit card interest rate reduction programs, extended automobile warranties, and home security systems."
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Two trash humans were asked nicely to not do it again, and did it again. don’t worry though the prison cells they should have been locked away in are filled with minor drug charges by minorities or something else equally stupid.
TLDR: the perpetrators were trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.
Good to see the FCC going after this kind of thing. Put them in jail even better.
I have my phone set up so the only numbers that chime the phone are those in my contact list. The abuse of voice and text on the cell network is rampant and it's equivalent to trespassing.
Now do political campaigns.
So, what tiny fraction of their profits does this fine represent?
Ya I appreciate the gesture but if this truly is the "biggest" robocall racket I have to imagine a 300M fine is a dropping the bucket
Not gonna help. Not accepting calls from unknown numbers and/or automated filtering is the only way forward, the model of being able to just call anyone is broken.
How many of you have received these calls? I got a ton of them along with my husband and siblings.
Those were partly the reason I stopped answering unknown numbers.
Spam callers have basically ruined telephone as a medium. For many, a phone call is more likely to be fake and spam than it is to be legitimate. And even if the call claims to come from a source you might trust, good odds it's spoofed and thus cannot in fact be trusted.
A shame on telecoms for not being willing to tackle the problem.
Both email and the telephone have been ruined by spam for me. The inbox has become an unwieldy, inefficient mess.
I'm even getting Google Drive spam now. Complete randos "sharing files" with me. There's no way to prevent it.
At least email has some tools to help mitigate the issue, like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. They aren't perfect, but they are loads better than telephony.
Ban all robocalls, legal or illegal. If any business that needs to reach can leave a voicemail. I'll decide then which should be deleted and which required a call back.
Good! Large fines create a meaningful deterrent for bad behavior.
Sure deterred them from doing it again after the first time… oh wait.
Maybe it'll help as long as the fine is some % of their net income. Sweden does this, speeding tickets are a % of your income instead of a fixed fine, so someone with $10MM will still feel the burn.
Depends on if they make so much money that 300M is just cost of doing business. There needs to be prison time for those involved.
Also $300M is the public fine number. Usually the actual fine is less than what is made public.
$300M feels like "Ahh we caught you now, bad boys, don't let me catch you again. Now go have your lunch."
These people should be punished harsher for all the lives they've destroyed intentionally.
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