(KNSI) — Your hands are full, you’re in the middle of a project, or you’re busy at work and your phone rings. It looks like a legitimate telephone number, so you stop what you’re doing and answer, but alas, it’s a scam robocall.
Now, Minnesota is joining a state and federal “Operation Stop Scam Calls” initiative to crack down on what officials call the “scourge of illegal robocalls” that have made billions of phone calls to wireless and landline customers nationwide.
The Federal Trade Commission and other law enforcement partners, plus attorneys general from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, are teaming up to target the callers, the companies enabling them, and the lead generators who “deceptively collect and provide consumers’ telephone numbers to robocallers and others, falsely representing that these consumers have consented to receive calls.” Other contributing law enforcers include the U.S. Department of Justice, Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Federal Communications Commission.
Voice Over Internet Protocol providers facilitating the calls, which often originate from overseas, are also in the crosshairs.
According to the National Consumer Law Center and Electronic Privacy Information Center, over 33 million scam robocalls are made to Americans daily. Scammers stole an estimated $29.8 billion through scam calls in 2021 alone.
Five new cases against companies and individuals responsible for distributing or assisting in distributing billions of illegal telemarketing calls to consumers nationwide were announced this week.
In August 2022, the state joined a multistate investigation into 20 so-called gateway providers allegedly responsible for enabling much of the robocall traffic in the U.S. as part of the then-newly formed Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force. In May 2023, Minnesota joined 48 states, and the District of Columbia in suing Avid Telecom for generating more than 7.5 billion illegal robocalls to numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, the first lawsuit to arise from the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force.
For information on how to spot and avoid phone scams, click here.
The FTC also has a new educational webpage here that includes examples of real illegal robocalls and steps people can take to avoid robocall scams.
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