Federal regulators on Tuesday announced a broad crackdown on what they
called a "tide of illegal telemarketing calls" plaguing U.S. consumers.

Samuel Levin, Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of
Consumer Protection, said the effort will target telemarketers that
continue to flout laws against robocalls as well as so-called consent
farms, or firms that provide people's phone numbers to robocallers while
falsely claiming that consumers have agreed to receive calls. Federal and
state authorities will also target providers of internet phone service
that enable illegal robocalls, he added.

The FTC � along with officials from the Federal Communications Commission
and U.S. Department of Justice as well as state prosecutors from Ohio and
Illinois � have already filed complaints against two of the nation's
largest consent farms as part of the push to step up the government's
fight against robocalls.

"Tricking customers into agreeing to robocalls is not clever, it's not
innovative � it's illegal," Levine said in a news conference. "I know this
is not what robocallers want to hear, but it is, and has been, the law."

Telemarketing firms may not simply rely on lead-generation firms to claim
that a consumer has provided their consent to receive robocalls, according
to the FTC. Rather, telemarketers must obtain consent directly from the
individual who is called.

Spam-demic
"It is hard to overstate the role that these consent farms play in our
country's epidemic of spam calls," Levine said. "They are fueling fraud
and opening the door to billions of robocalls but with the actions being
announced today the FTC and our partners are going to shut that door and
lock it."

Federal regulators filed a complaint against Fluent, a New York-based
publicly traded media company that allegedly operated as a consent farm
from January 2018 to December 2019. FTC officials accuse Fluent of
creating fake websites that promise job offers or gift cards to Walmart or
UPS. Site users were encouraged to complete a form that includes their
personal information, and Fluent would then allegedly sell that data to
telemarketers, the complaint claims.

Fluent sold more than 620 million personal data leads to robocallers, and
the company now faces a $2.5 million penalty, the FTC said.

Fluent didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Federal regulators also took legal action against Viceroy Media, a digital
marketing company in California that allegedly used websites to capture
consumers' personal information. In a separate complaint, the FTC accused
Viceroy of operating quick-jobs.com and localjobindex.com as a front for
capturing personal data. The company's two owners � Sunil Kanda and Quynh
Tran of California � then sold the data to robocallers, the FTC alleged.

Viceroy didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

"This is really a comprehensive crackdown, not only on telemarketers but
those like voice providers and consent farms, who make their fraud
possible," Levine said.

"Plague of locusts"
Federal and state authorities have for years tried to stamp out unlawful
robocalls, including those to people on the FTC's Do Not Call Registry. In
2021, three brothers from New Jersey paid a $1.6 million settlement for
their role in instigating more than 45 million illegal robocalls.

In another action taken against a major telemarketer, attorneys general
from nearly every U.S. state filed a lawsuit in May against Avid Telecom,
which was accused of making more than 7.5 billion robocalls to people on
the FTC's no-call list. Those calls related to the Social Security
Administration, Medicare, auto warranties, Amazon, DirecTV, credit card
interest rate reduction and employment, according to the suit.

Americans received 50.3 billion robocalls in 2022, roughly the same number
as 2021, according to YouMail data. Many calls involve scams. In 2022,
phone scams yielded a median loss of $1,400 per person, according to the
FTC.

"Robocallers are like a plague of locusts, using modern-day technology to
swarm through the international telecommunications landscape, deceiving,
scamming, defrauding thousands of our constituents every single day," Ohio
Attorney General Dave Yost on Tuesday.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robocall-ftc-ohio-illinois-scam-calls/