A Miami man accused of flooding consumers with 96 million phone calls touting fake travel deals faces a record proposed $120 million fine from federal regulators, who said he operated the worst robocall spoofing effort they had seen.
Adrian Abramovich tried to trick consumers into answering and listening to his advertising messages, the Federal Communications Commission said in a news release Thursday. The pace of calls works out to an average of more than 1 million per day.
“The FCC is taking major, unprecedented action against what appears to be the most egregious neighbor-spoofing robocalling scheme that we have ever seen,” said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.
Calls appeared to come from local numbers, but those who answered were prompted to “Press 1” to hear about vacation deals, according to the FCC. If they did, consumers were connected to call centers not affiliated with companies mentioned in messages, such as Expedia Inc., TripAdvisor Inc., Marriott International Inc. and Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc., according to the agency.
Robocalls FCC News Release
Video from 3/27/17 – Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much these days. But one thing they can rally behind is ending annoying robocalls. On Thursday, the FCC unanimously voted 3-0 to adopt new rules to make it easier for phone companies to stop these calls. In short, the new rules will allow phone companies to block a number if it seems bogus. It’s already against the law for marketers to call people who have placed their numbers on the federal Do Not Call List. But that hasn’t stopped marketers and fraudsters from inundating Americans with automated calls. According to the FCC, American consumers received about 29 billion of robocalls in 2016 or about 230 calls for every U.S. household. FCC chairman Ajit Pai said that unwanted robocalls are the No. 1 complaint the FCC receives from consumers.
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