The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received nearly 2 million complaints from Americans about illegal robocalls in the first nine months of 2020.
These statistics are included in the US Department of Justice Report called “Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act 2020.”
“Illegal robocalls remain a significant consumer protection problem and one of the top consumer complaints to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC),” the report states.
“Throughout the first nine months of fiscal year 2020, the FTC received more than 2.7 million complaints about unwanted calls, including 1.9 million complaints about robocalls.”
According to official FTC data, the exact number of “Do Not Call” complaints since the beginning of 2020 is 2,814,851, with 1,988,489 of them related to robocalls and only 624,634 to real callers.
Over $160 million in fines
The same report states that the FTC has filed about 150 lawsuits against 500 businesses and 400 individuals since the National Do Not Call Registry began accepting registrations 17 years ago.
The government agency also collected more than $160 million in civil penalties during that period, as detailed in a DoJ published earlier today.
During Operation Call It Quits in recent years, the FTC and law along with 25 federal, state, and local agencies coordinated 95 lawsuits against businesses that were behind over a billion illegal calls to consumers.
So far, the FTC has filed 148 lawsuits against more than 600 individuals and companies responsible for billions in illegal theft and various other “Do Not Call” violations.
“To date, 140 of these FTC enforcement actions have been resolved, and in those cases the agency has recovered over $52 million in criminal penalties and $ in compensatory damages,” the agency explains.
The FCC is also targeting robocallers
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has also hit organizations behind robocall campaigns with hundreds of millions in fines in recent years.
Among them, a $120 million fine was issued against a Florida-based telemarketer in May 2018 for approximately 100 million robocalls it made over a three-month period.
The FCC also issued an $82 million penalty in September 2018 against a North Carolina-based telemarketer for over 21 million robocalls it made to buy health.
While in these cases, the FCC was forced to warn robocallers during the sanctions process, starting in May 2020 the agency no longer issues warnings before issuing sanctions.
The FCC also increased the maximum penalty per robocall to $10,000 and extended the time frame within which it can punish robocallers – four years from when the violations.
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
