Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and his counterparts from nearly every state are urging the federal government to take stronger action against robocall scammers, essentially arguing that regulators have spent so long developing rules to tame the industry that scammers have already shifted to tactics that make the government’s proposed regulations obsolete.
Raoul and 48 other attorneys general issued a letter on Wednesday calling on the Federal Communications Commission to strengthen pending rules aimed at cutting off scammers’ access to legitimate telephone numbers that are used to place fraudulent robocalls and send deceptive text messages. The coalition is part of the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, which first asked the FCC to address the issue in 2021.
After reviewing the FCC’s proposed rules, the attorneys general say the plan does not go far enough because scammers have largely abandoned phone number spoofing, which the FCC targets with its rules, in favor of purchasing millions of legitimate phone numbers to carry out their schemes.
“Instead of using spoofed phone numbers to scam Illinois consumers, robocallers are increasingly buying millions of real numbers so that consumers think they are receiving a call from a legitimate business or agency,” Raoul said. “We encourage the FTC to take additional steps to address robocallers’ efforts to circumvent our mitigation attempts.”
In a comment letter to the FCC, the attorneys general said the agency’s proposed rules would help reduce illegal phone number spoofing, but they warned that scammers have already adapted by purchasing legitimate numbers in bulk, making fraudulent calls appear authentic without relying on spoofing technology.
To address that shift, the coalition asked the FCC to require companies that buy and resell North American phone numbers to meet stricter certification standards and disclose how and to whom they assign numbers. The attorneys general also urged the FCC to require those companies to file regular reports detailing the sale and use of telephone numbers so law enforcement agencies can trace illegal robocalls to their source and hold companies throughout the call chain accountable when numbers are used for fraudulent purposes.
Other recommendations include requiring applicants seeking access to telephone numbers to certify they will not use them for illegal robocalls, prohibiting the sale of numbers to entities that are not connected to legitimate calling or texting services, banning the practice of “number cycling,” in which scammers rotate through large pools of phone numbers to avoid detection, and restricting free trial phone numbers that can be exploited.
The letter was signed by the attorneys general of every state except Florida, Montana, and Texas, according to Raoul. The attorneys general of the District of Columbia and American Samoa also joined the effort.
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