The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued the largest fine in its history. Two Texas-based telemarketers are about to receive $ 225 million after making approximately 1 billion automatic calls to people in the United States. They ran at least two businesses that illegally forged other companies to try to sell short-term insurance plans to people, claiming that they were from well-known suppliers like Cigna.
One of the people involved in the scheme admitted to making “millions” of automatic calls a day, even bothering to call numbers on the Do Not Call list because he believed it would be more profitable to do so. According to the FCC, “a large part” of the more than 23.6 million automatic health insurance calls that crossed the United States’ wireless networks in 2018 came from Rising Eagle, one of the companies managed by the two telemarketers.
It is unlikely that a fine, even the largest in the agency’s history, will control automatic calls. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that they were not effective. Two years ago, a report from Wall Street Newspaper found that, between 2015 and 2019, the FCC ordered violators of the Consumer Protection Telephone Law to pay $ 208.4 million in fines. At the end of that period, the agency had raised only $ 6,790. That number may have changed in the years since the WSJ’s report came out. At the same time, it is not encouraging.
If there is good news, it is that the FCC is not limited to fines. In a separate announcement, the agency detailed its new anti-robocall agenda. Acting President Jessica Rosenworcel established a Robocall response team. Composed of 51 FCC members in six offices, the team will coordinate the agency’s anti-robocall efforts and develop new policies to be implemented. It also sent cease and desist letters to six companies in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, which consistently encouraged its automated calling guidelines. If the companies fail to comply with the letters, the FCC says it can instruct voice providers in the United States to block all their traffic permanently.