Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin today joined a multistate lawsuit against Michael D. Lansky, LLC, which trades under the name Avid Telecom, its owner Michael Lansky, and its vice president, Stacey S. Reeves, for allegedly initiating and facilitating billions of illegal robocalls to millions of people and violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and other telemarketing and consumer laws at the federal and state levels. Between December 2018 and January 2023, Avid Telecom made or transmitted more than 7.5 billion calls to numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry. Of those calls, more than 237 million were made to New Jersey numbers.
Attorney General Platkin stated, “Everyone has experienced robocalls, and nobody likes them.” We are eliminating billions of fraudulent phone calls and preventing them from continuing to annoy our residents by filing this complaint.
Avid Telecom is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service provider that assists customers in making mass robocalls by selling data, phone numbers, dialing software, and/or expertise. Additionally, it allegedly facilitates or aids in the routing of illegal robocalls across the nation and serves as an intermediary provider. More than 24.5 billion calls were sent or attempted to be sent by Avid between December 2018 and January 2023. Since more than 90% of those calls ended in less than 15 seconds, it’s likely that they were robocalls. Further, Enthusiastic aided make countless calls utilizing mock or invalid guest ID numbers, including more than 8.4 million calls that had all the earmarks of being coming from government and policing, as well as privately owned businesses.
Scam calls about employment scams, Medicare scams, auto warranty scams, Amazon scams, DirecTV scams, credit card interest rate reduction scams, and Medicare scams are said to have been sent or transmitted by Avid Telecom. You can listen to some examples of these con calls here and here.
“Spontaneous robocalls are irritating, yet they additionally are apparatuses that tricksters use to commit extortion,” said Cari Fais, Acting Overseer of the Division of Buyer Undertakings. ” Our participation in this complaint demonstrates our dedication to safeguarding New Jersey residents from bogus calls and scams.
The USTelecom-drove Industry Traceback Gathering, which tells suppliers about known and thought unlawful robocalls sent across their organizations, sent no less than 329 notices to Eager Telecom that it was sending these calls, however Enthusiastic Telecom kept on doing as such.
The present lawful activity emerges from the cross country Hostile to Robocall Multistate Case Team of 51 bipartisan lawyers general. The individuals who are responsible for routing significant volumes of illegal robocall traffic into and throughout the United States are the subject of an investigation and legal action by the task force. In this case, the investigation was assisted by the Office of the Inspector General of the Social Security Administration and the Federal Trade Commission.
Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, D.C., Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming are also included in the complaint
The State is addressed by Representative Lawyers General Deepta Janardhan and Jeff Koziar of the Customer Extortion Arraignment Area in the Division of Regulation’s Positive Common Implementation Practice Gathering, under the management of Associate Segment Boss Jesse J. Sierant, Partner Principal legal officer Jennifer S. Schiefelbein, Appointee Chief Jason W. Rockwell, and Chief Michael T.G. Long.
Source – Einnews