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from the records-that-tell-us-your-auto-warranty-is-about-to-expire dept.
The agency mandated U.S. providers to stop carrying traffic originating from the Sumco Panama company and the two people allegedly behind it, Aaron Michael Jones and Roy Cox. Jr., both of California.
The group is accused of making more than 8 billion robocalls to U.S. consumers since 2018, marketing an auto-warranty scam, records show.
[...] FCC data estimates Sumco Panama generates millions of calls on a daily basis.
Earlier this month, the agency sent cease-and-desist letters to a number of carriers to halt the calls, including Call Pipe, Fugle Telecom, Geist Telecom, Global Lynks, Mobi Telecom, South Dakota Telecom, SipKonnect and Virtual Telecom.
"Now that U.S. voice service providers know the individuals and entities associated with this scheme, the Enforcement Bureau will closely monitor voice service providers' compliance with this order and take appropriate enforcement action as necessary," Acting FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal said in a statement.
[...] "Billions of auto warranty robocalls from a single calling campaign -- billions!" FCC Rosenworcel said earlier this month. "Auto warranty scams are one of the top complaints we get from consumers and it's time to hold those responsible for making these junk calls."
See also: FCC Orders Blocking of Auto Warranty Robocall Scam Campaign
Anyone know how telephony works these days? Why is it hard to address robocalls and other issues like phone number spoofing? It seems since both endpoints of a call are fixed that it should be easy to tell where a call originates and from what number. Is this a common scam outside the US?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by wArlOrd on Sunday July 24 2022, @03:50PM (1 child)
If the carriers were incentivized to stop fraud and robocalls they would.
IF the customer could easily report a robocall (e.g. *44 i.e.*$$ when they get one) to receive a $1 credit on their bill from their service provider;
AND the service provider could charge the PROXIMATE SOURCE (i.e. another customer of the service OR an ADJACENT service provider) that 1$ PLUS a handling fee (the handling fee would likely dwarf the 1$);
THEN the service provider complicit in the robocalls would either stop the calls or stop dealing with the adjacent source.
The service provider KNOWS if the call originated with one of their customers or another carrier. They can charge either the originator, or the next chain in the crime. At least the first couple of links can be traced while the offending call is active, when the call ends the service provider can tell their customer that the 1$ has been credited to the account.
If 1$ doesn't stop the robocalls, it can be doubled each week until the calls stop.
If an adjacent service provider started getting lots of charges for passing robocalls, they would soon deal with the robocalls, perhaps by passing on the charges and additional billing fees to the originator or the next one down the line.
If the robocallers are hiding behind a chain of service providers, by the time the charges have paced along the chain the $ amounts could be significant.
The only one ringing the customers phone is their service provider. The customer is unable to identify the source beyond that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2022, @05:39PM
This reminds me from back in the 90s when SPAM email was a huge problem. Some people suggested that it one should have to pay per email sent, something small like a quarter of a cent so that a normal user wouldn't be impacted much, but someone sending out millions of emails a week would.