Attorney General Brenna Bird Fights for Further Crackdown on Illegal Robocalls

DES MOINES— Attorney General Brenna Bird and 48 other attorneys general today called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to strengthen rules that would cut off scammers’ access to legitimate telephone numbers. Without that access, scammers can’t use real numbers to deceive and scam Iowans. The Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force asked the FCC to work on this issue in 2021, and members of this coalition are now responding to the FCC’s proposed rules.   

“Scam robocalls aren’t just annoying, they are dangerous and illegal,” said Attorney General Bird. “When Iowans believe they are communicating with their real bank or local law enforcement, they are often scammed out of thousands of dollars, sometimes even their life savings. We’re asking the federal government for stronger restrictions to keep criminals from access to legitimate phone numbers to contact Iowans.”  

Last year, Americans received approximately 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts and lost nearly $2 billion to these scams. The federal government and state attorneys general successfully took action to cut down on illegal spoofing of real numbers where scammers pretend they are a legitimate company or government agency. Now, scammers often purchase legitimate phone numbers and use them to make robocalls.   

While most legitimate businesses use the same phone number for many years, scammers cycle through millions of brand-new phone numbers, which helps them avoid detection by spam filters. In one North Carolina case, scammers made more than 17.3 million calls on a single day through one phone company – but they generally didn’t use the same number more than twice to make those calls, which is a common tactic among scammers.   

In addition to the steps the FCC is already taking, the bipartisan attorneys general are asking the federal government to:   

• Prohibit number cycling, which is when an entity buys lots of numbers and then uses them on a rotating, sometimes single-use basis to avoid being detected by tools that flag numbers used to make illegal robocalls.  

Attorney General Bird is joined in signing the letter by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.   

Read the letter here. 

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For More Information:

Contact: Jen Green | jen.green@ag.iowa.gov