OKLAHOMA CITY — The state Legislature and federal agencies are taking steps to disconnect obnoxious robocallers.
Last year, the Oklahoma Legislature passed and Gov. Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 3168 by former state Rep. Logan Phillips, creating the Telephone Solicitation Act of 2022.
As a general rule, the new law, which went into effect Nov. 1, prohibits:
• Automated telephonic sales calls (“robocalls”) without prior express written consent;
• Telephonic sales calls that do not display on the caller ID the originating telephone number and name;
• Telephonic sales calls that intentionally alter the voice of the caller in an attempt to disguise or conceal the identity of the caller in order to mislead or confuse the recipient;
• Sales calls before 8 a.m. and after 8 p.m.;
• More than three sales calls within a 24-hour period on the same matter.
• Telephonic sales calls that block caller ID or display a different phone number than the originating number.
Exempt phone calls include solicitations for religious, charitable or political purposes.
Also last November, the national Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force filed for a court order compelling the production of information from two voice service providers over their alleged involvement in illegal robocalls.
Fifty-one attorneys general, including Oklahoma’s, participate in the national task force, which Indiana co-leads with North Carolina and Ohio. The task force asked the Marion County Circuit/Superior Court in Indiana to require two service providers to cooperate in multistate investigations for their involvement in illegal robocalls.
The gateway voice providers – Michael Lansky LLC, dba Avid Telecom, and One Eye LLC – routed fraudulent robocalls, including government imposter scams, fake legal threats and phony offers purporting to be from businesses such as Amazon and Apple. The national task force is enforcing civil investigative demands against each entity.
Scam robocalls in 2021 resulted in $29.8 billion in thefts nationwide, according to the National Consumer Law Center and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
According to the National Consumer Law Center and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, more than 33 million scam robocalls are made to Americans every day. These calls include fraudsters posing as the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, Amazon and employers offering work opportunities.
The enforcement action against Avid Telecom alleges several instances in which the company knowingly accepted and routed illegal robocalls. Further, the task force believes Lansky, Avid Telecom’s CEO, helped another telecom provide illegal robocall traffic.
The enforcement action against One Eye details how an individual named Prince Anand closed another voice service provider, PZ Telecommunication, and became the apparent CEO of One Eye. This transition occurred after the Federal Communications Commission sent PZ Telecom a cease-and-desist letter.
The national task force filed petitions in Indiana state court to enforce their civil investigative demands against Avid and One Eye, compel them to answer interrogatories and produce documents, including all call data records that show the volume and content of the call traffic they are sending to consumers.
Justice Dept., FTC sue robocallers
Recently, the Federal Trade Commission sued to stop an interconnected web of operations responsible for delivering tens of millions of unwanted Voice Over Internet Protocol and ringless voicemail phony debt service robocalls to consumers nationwide. The U.S. Department of Justice filed the complaint in federal court on the FTC’s behalf.
The lawsuit alleges violations of the FTC Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule in connection with telemarketing campaigns that have illegally bombarded American consumers with millions of robocalls.
The FTC is taking action against Stratics Networks, a company that supplied the technology for telemarketers to make tens of millions of robocalls. The FTC also is suing the debt relief companies that hired Stratics to make robocalls for their illegal debt relief services.
The FTC says Stratics delivered illegal robocalls for a variety of telemarketers, promoting offers for things such as credit card and student debt relief, home buying, health insurance and cable TV discounts, and for telemarketers playing on concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many robocalls were “ringless voicemails,” where your phone doesn’t ring but you get a voicemail with a robocall message.
From at least 2013 to 2020, Stratics sold its wholesale Session Initiation Protocol termination service to other Voice over Internet Protocol technology service providers, including Texas-based defendants Netlatitude and its owner, Kurt Hannigan, and many others.
Stratics also sold access to its platform for delivering ringless voicemail, a call that goes to a consumer’s voicemail without ringing their telephone. Netlatitude used Stratics’ wholesale Session Initiation Protocol termination services to operate its own RVM service, which it then sold to a foreign telemarketer of debt relief services.
According to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, Stratics Networks and Netlatitude Inc., along with defendant Kurt Hannigan, Netlatitude’s president, violated the Telemarketing Sales Rule by providing substantial assistance and support in the form of technological services to telemarketers that unlawfully called consumers with robocalls delivering prerecorded marketing messages, called numbers listed on the National Do Not Call Registry and failed to truthfully identify the seller of the goods and services being marketed.
The complaint also brings claims against several additional defendants that allegedly used Stratics Networks ringless voicemail platform to illegally telemarket credit card debt relief services.
According to the complaint, defendants Tek Ventures (also doing business as Provident Solutions), Atlas Marketing Partners, Atlas Investment Ventures, Eric Petersen and Todd DiRoberto (who are co-owners of those three companies), Kasm and Kenan Azzeh (owner and director of Kasm) violated the FTC Act by misrepresenting the terms and outcomes of their debt relief services.
The defendants also violated the TSR by making those misrepresentations, failing to clearly and truthfully identify the seller of their services and calling consumers with prerecorded messages without first obtaining their consent.
The complaint also alleges that defendants Tek Ventures, Atlas Marketing Partners, Atlas Investment Ventures, Eric Petersen, Todd DiRoberto and two additional defendants – Ace Business Solutions and its owner and director, Sandra Barnes – violated the Telemarketing Sales Rule by requesting and receiving payments from their debt relief customers before renegotiating or otherwise altering the terms of those customers’ debts.
2 defendants agree to cease and desist
The complaint seeks a permanent injunction to prohibit the defendants from future violations, as well as monetary civil penalties and relief to redress injury caused to consumers.
Two of the defendants – Kasm and its owner and director, Kenan Azzeh – have agreed to entry of a court order that resolves the claims against them.
The stipulated order, if entered by the court, would prohibit these defendants from further violations and impose a monetary judgment of $3,380,000, suspended to $7,500 due to their limited ability to pay.