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.”
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
TLDR: the perpetrators were trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty.
Good! Large fines create a meaningful deterrent for bad behavior.
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.” 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.”
In 2017, the FTC obtained a similar telemarketing ban on Jones. He was also fined $2.7 million, but, as with Cox, the fine was “suspended based on his inability to pay.”
No fine is going to be paid this time either I imagine.
@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
Anyone got a number?
I have some very important information for them regarding expiration of their vehicle warranties.
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.
How many of you have received these calls? I got a ton of them along with my husband and siblings.
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.
Fines aren’t near enough at this point, we need public executions at a minimum to put a dent in this problem.
Yes, I suppose we could beat telemarketers to death with that bell just as well as with anything else.
The way I see it, an alleged murderer is entitled to a trial by an impartial jury of one’s peers. However, It would be improper for victims of the deceased to serve on the jury trying the murder case.
When the deceased has continuously harassed everyone with a phone for the past 20+ years, it is impossible to assemble an impartial jury. Impossible to assemble a jury means it is also impossible to convict.
