OKLAHOMA CITY – AARP Oklahoma announced it supports two pieces of legislation that target criminals who use telephones and text messages to defraud Oklahomans, especially senior citizens.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, criminals steal nearly $3 billion annually from older Americans through financial exploitation. The agency said the primary way scammers contact victims is by telephone, which explains “the need to curtail unsolicited and fraudulent telemarketing calls.”
In December 2021 alone, Oklahomans received more than 44 million robocalls and 32% of them were identified as scams, according to Robocall Index. That equates to 16.6 calls per second being made across Oklahoma in just one month.
“Oklahomans need to be able to use their phones to conduct daily business and stay connected to their loved ones. Unfortunately, technology has allowed fraudsters and scammers unfettered access to individuals’ phones,” said Sean Voskuhl, AARP Oklahoma state director. “The sheer volume of calls and texts with spoofed or masked numbers makes it nearly impossible to tell if calls are legitimate,” he said.
Two measures pending in the Oklahoma Legislature are intended to curtail these types of calls.
Ÿ House Bill 1891 would allow local district attorneys and the state Attorney General to prosecute bad actors who spoof or mask their telephone numbers.
The bill would make it a crime if a commercial telephone seller or solicitor caused misleading information to be transmitted to the recipient’s caller identification service or device, or to otherwise misrepresent the origin of a telemarketing call. Violators would be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined up to $10,000 per occurrence.
HB 1891 passed the House of Representatives last year, cleared the Senate Business and Commerce Committee, and awaits a vote by the full Senate. Authors of the measure are Rep. Danny Williams and Sen. Zack Taylor, both Republicans from Seminole.
Ÿ House Bill 3168 seeks to eliminate unsolicited robocalls by requiring companies to have a recipient’s written consent before placing an automated call or text. Companies that break this law could have to pay victims up to $500 as a penalty.
The bill dictates that an individual could not make or knowingly allow a telephonic sales call to be made if the call involved an automated system for the selection or dialing of telephone numbers, or the playing of a recorded message when a connection is completed to a number called, without the prior express written consent of the called party.
It also would be unlawful for any person who makes a telephonic sales call to fail to transmit or cause not to be transmitted the originating telephone number and, when made available by the telephone solicitor’s carrier, the name of the telephone solicitor to any caller identification service in use by a recipient of a telephonic sales call.
HB 3168 passed the House Committee on Technology last month and awaits a vote on the House floor. Authors of the bill are Rep. Logan Phillips, R-Mounds, and Sen. James Leewright, R-Bristow.