The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) submitted its annual report on robocalls to Congress on December 27. Governments are responsible for overseeing their agencies every day of the year but the timing was not ideal. The issue of how to tackle robocalls deserves more public scrutiny than it receives. Most reporting about unwanted calls received by Americans is either a copy-paste of the message circulated by the FCC or echoes the sycophancy of businesses seeking to profit from their relationship with the FCC. That is why this article offers something different. My goal is to draw attention to those parts of the FCC’s report that most would like to ignore.
The FCC Has Only Sought Financial Penalties for Four Groups of Robocall Criminals in the Last Two Years
The FCC is obliged to list all Notices of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture (NALFs) and Forfeiture Orders that relate to robocall infractions, both during the year of the report and the prior year. NALFs come before Forfeiture Orders: the NALF proposes a figure which may be revised downwards following representations from the party that would have to pay whilst the Forfeiture Order confirms the final amount owed. Dispensing with all the noise created by multiple press releases that only reflect an excessive number of bureaucratic stages in the FCC’s enforcement process, the regulator has threatened just four groups of robocall crooks with financial punishment since the beginning of 2022.
- The Scammerblaster case, which is actually about traffic pumping fraud rather than making calls received by the public, was the subject of a USD116,156,250 NAFL on July 14, 2022. This figure was confirmed in an order issued 435 days later, on September 22, 2023.
- The Sumco Panama case, which involves crooks who were previously prosecuted for doing the same thing a decade ago, was the subject of a USD299,997,000 NAFL on December 23, 2022. This figure was confimed in an order issued 223 days later, on August 3, 2023.
- The Burkman-Wohl case involved political campaign robocalls that spread lies about the 2020 Presidential Election in order to discourage some voters from participating. Political robocalls are generally legal and the FCC had no power to act just because the messages were full of lies. However, the FCC jumped on the publicity bandwagon by issuing a USD5,134,500 fine because the list of phone numbers used by Burkman and Wohl included mobile phones. Their 1,141 calls to mobile phones were illegal because political calls to mobiles require consent in advance, unlike political calls to landlines.
- Gregory Robbins, Interstate Brokers of America LLC, and National Health Agents LLC were collectively presented with a USD45,000,000 NAFL on February 22, 2022. No follow-up order was issued.
Huge numbers were attached to eye-grabbing press releases but when you look at the detail, the FCC hardly ever seeks punishment of the people who make robocalls that violate section 227 of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).
Not a Single FCC Robocall Fine Has Been Collected Since the Beginning of 2022
The FCC only rarely issues fines to robocallers but somebody else is tasked with collecting those fines: the Department of Justice (DOJ). The FCC’s report clarifies that the fines it issues to robocallers invariably end up in a pile at the DOJ marked ‘do not disturb’.
During calendar year 2022 and the period of January 1, 2023 to November 30, 2023, the DOJ did not collect any forfeiture penalties or criminal fines for violations of section 227 in cases that the Commission has referred.
In theory, the DOJ should be collecting fines from each of the following groups of robocallers.
- Adrian Abramovich, Marketing Strategy Leaders, Inc., and Marketing Leaders, Inc.;
- Philip Roesel, dba Wilmington Insurance Quotes, and Best Insurance Contracts, Inc.;
- Affordable Enterprises of Arizona, LLC;
- Scott Rhodes a.k.a. Scott David Rhodes, Scott D. Rhodes, Scott Platek, Scott P. Platek;
- Kenneth Moser dba Marketing Support Systems;
- John C. Spiller; Jakob A. Mears; Rising Eagle Capital Group LLC; JSquared Telecom LLC; Only Web Leads LLC; Rising Phoenix Group; Rising Phoenix Holdings; RPG Leads; and Rising Eagle Capital Group – Cayman;
- John M. Burkman, Jacob Alexander Wohl, J.M. Burkman & Associates LLC (Burkman);
- Sumco Panama SA, Sumco Panama USA, Virtual Telecom kft, Virtual Telecom Inc., Davis Telecom Inc., Geist Telecom LLC, Fugle Telecom LLC, Tech Direct LLC, Mobi Telecom LLC, and Posting Express Inc. (Sumco Panama); and
- Thomas Dorsher; ChariTel Inc; OnTel Inc; ScammerBlaster Inc.
American taxpayers are bombarded with messages telling them that government agencies are making great strides with tackling illegal robocalls. Lazy journalists and sycophants spread stories about vigorous enforcement only being hampered by the ingeniousness of fraudsters. The reality is that dysfunctional government agencies create paperwork from time to time, some of which takes the form of press releases, but they are fully aware that robocall criminals suffer no real consequences for breaking the law.
Because Government Agencies Do Not Punish Criminals, They Increase the Burden on Honest Businesses Instead
The new rules will also require originating providers to promptly investigate suspected illegal traffic when notified by the Commission and, if the traffic is illegal, to block that traffic and all substantially similar traffic. Also effective January 8, 2024, the FCC will require all voice service providers to take reasonable and effective steps to ensure that any immediate upstream provider from which they accept call traffic is not using it to carry or process a high volume of illegal traffic.
Governments exist to maintain order by punishing wrongdoing. But in the topsy-turvy world of US robocall mitigation, the government only seeks to punish legitimate businesses for failing to block illegal calls, whilst refusing to mete out any punishment to the criminals responsible for placing those same calls. Highly-paid lawyers then act surprised that fraudsters keep looking for new ways to work around the blocks that have been put in place. Why would career criminals do otherwise? Breaking the law has no downside for them because the law is never applied to them.
This broken system is feeding a string of parasitic businesses that intend to endlessly profit from the game of blocking bad traffic. These crony capitalists do not want the root cause of robocalls to be addressed, just as drug companies would rather everybody spent the remainder of their lives popping pills for their ailments instead of being healthy, and weapons manufacturers never tire of persuading taxpayers of the need for yet more foreign military intervention.
The free press shows what little value they place on freedom by idly repeating whatever they have been told by government agencies and crony capitalists. For some years they repeated the lie that preventing CLI spoofing was key to reducing unwanted calls, and none thought to ask about the price tag for implementing this technology. Now the FCC is conditioning the press to repeat a new narrative: CLI spoofing is becoming irrelevant because fraudsters are just buying the rights to use genuine phone numbers instead. Who could have predicted that would happen, other than anyone with half an inkling of how criminals behave in real life? So having wasted half a billion dollars on the last boondoggle, the perpetual players of whac-a-mole anticipate spending many more millions on the next series of technological wonders that will supposedly identify and block bad traffic.
Nobody is rewarded for making the simple argument that far less money would be spent, and far more saved in the long run, if organized criminals were punished, taken out of circulation, and deterred from returning to the scene of the crime over and over again. But that would require a government that does what governments are supposed to do. We instead have the farcical situation that a government agency run by legions of lawyers has given up on the prospect of applying the law to the criminals who cause all the harm.
The FCC’s December 27, 2023 report to Congress on robocalls and transmission of misleading or inaccurate caller identification information can be found here.
