RALEIGH – Today, Attorney General Jeff Jackson launched Operation Robocall Roundup, a multistate effort by the Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force to crack down on robocalls across the country and in North Carolina. As part of the operation, Attorney General Jackson is taking three separate enforcement actions, including sending warning letters to 37 voice providers demanding that they act now to stop illegal robocalls being routed through their networks.
“North Carolinians are getting bombarded with millions of invasive robocalls every day, and these communication companies are not following the rules to protect us,” said Attorney General Jeff Jackson. “We are giving these companies three weeks to start following the rules so we can shield people from these annoying and illegal robocalls.”
Notice Letters
Attorney General Jackson is leading the Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force, made up of 51 bipartisan attorneys general, in sending warning letters to 37 voice service providers. These providers haven’t complied with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules about responding to government traceback requests, haven’t registered in the FCC’s Robocall Mitigation Databases, or haven’t filed a plan that describes how they will reduce illegal robocalls on their network. By disregarding these simple rules, these companies are allowing robocallers onto their phone networks and then passing their calls on to other downstream providers until they reach North Carolinians’ phones.
The task force is also sending the letters to 99 downstream providers that accept call traffic from the 37 companies, so that they know they’re doing business with bad actors that are not willing to follow the rules that apply to everyone equally.
The voice service providers receiving warning letters are:
- Advantage Investors LLC
- Alpha Stream
- Ananya Traders LLC
- Ariyan Khan
- BBT Voice Private Limited
- Belthrough
- BPO VoIP
- Collection 3 LLC
- Communications and Telephone Systems Co.
- Dial Vista Corp.
- DigitalOcean, LLC
- Dtel Network LLC
- End Zone Financial Services
- EON Telecom Inc.
- Family Communication Inc.
- Fiber Flux VOIP
- First Tele Communications Inc.
- Flow VOIP LLC
- Globe Tech Solutions
- Higher Response Marketing, Inc.
- HK KwaiFong Group Limited
- Infinity SIP LLC
- Lexico Telecom LTD / Lextel LTD
- Mexico IP Phones LLC
- Nexusphere VOIP LLC
- Pleedex LLC
- Quantum Link VOIP LLC
- Ringnition
- SK Teleco LLC
- SkyPulse VOIP
- Stacy Newsome LNCC LCC
- Telnextrix LLC
- Terra Voip
- TheVisionConnect
- Tiera Enterprises LLC
- Voip Torque
- Whisl Telecom, LLC / Telconus / Telcon US / Telcon Voice
In 2022, 51 attorneys general joined forces to create the Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force, which is led by Attorney General Jackson, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. The Task Force investigates and takes legal action against companies responsible for significant volumes of illegal and fraudulent robocall traffic routed into and across the United States.
FCC Coordination
The task force is also working with the FCC to combat these robocalls. In a separate enforcement, the FCC announced that it will be removing seven of these 37 providers from the Robocall Mitigation Database, which means that other providers will no longer be allowed to accept and route any calls from their networks. V oice providers must refuse to route calls from voice providers not registered in the Robocall Mitigation Database.
Articul8 Judgment
Attorney General Jackson has also won a court order against voice provider Articul8 and its owner Paul Talbot for providing substantial assistance to fraudsters that operated robocall and telemarketing scams in North Carolina and across the country by accepting and routing millions of illegal and fraudulent calls. The order bars Talbot from operating any companies in the telecommunications industry and requires him to pay over $5 million in civil penalties. The FCC has also removed Articul8 and Talbot from the Robocall Mitigation Database.
You can read the letters to the voice providers here.
Video Footage from Attorney General Jackson
Download the full video clip here.
Download clips from the video here:
- Clip 1: “Everywhere I go, people ask me to do more to combat these annoying, and usually illegal, robocalls that are just trying to scam you out of your money. So, we started this operation to become more aggressive on this but also to take the fight upstream.”
- Clip 2: “As of today, we will be sending notice to 37 different telecommunications companies who we allege are not following the rules when it comes to protecting you from robocalls.”
- Clip 3: “We had one company called Articul8 that decided not to follow the rules. As of today, we have driven it out of business, and it now has a fine of over $5 million. Because you asked us to crack down on this, so we are.”
- Clip 4: “We allege that these 37 companies are not following the rules. As of today, we are giving them three weeks to start following the rules.”
STATS (AVAILABLE FOR MEDIA USE)
- North Carolinians have received almost 1.3 billion robocalls this year. That’s an average of roughly 149.8 calls per person affected.
- In June alone, North Carolinians received over 200 million robocalls. That’s 6.8 million calls per day, over 280,000 per hour, 78.4 per second and an average of 24 calls per person.
- In 2024, North Carolinians received over 2.3 billion robocalls. That’s an increase of over 200 million calls from 2023.
- According to the Federal Trade Commission, North Carolina is in the top five states nationwide for robocalls and text scams per capita. Our state averages about 778 complaints per 100,000 people.
GRAPHICS (AVAILABLE FOR MEDIA USE)
