Spam calls: US sues this telecom firm for 7.5 billion robocalls – Times of India

Avid Telecom is an Arizona-based firm that was formed in 2000. The telecom company has been reportedly sued making more than 7.5 billion robocalls to people on the National Do Not Call Registry. According to a report by CBS, in this lawsuit, almost all US states are acting as plaintiffs, except the District of Columbia and the states of Alaska and South Dakota. These states are also filing a lawsuit against Avid Telecom owner Michael Lansky and the company’s vice president, Stacey Reeves. The complaint accused the telco received more than 320 notifications about illegal robocalls before the suit was filed.
The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the District of Arizona. The prosecutor accused that nearly 197 million of the robocalls allegedly initiated and facilitated by Avid Telecom were made to Arizona phone numbers between December 2018 and January 2023.
“Defendants chose profit over running a business that conforms to state and federal law. Defendants could have chosen to implement effective and meaningful procedures to prevent—or even significantly mitigate—the perpetration of illegal behaviour onto and across Avid Telecom’s network but chose not to do so,” the lawsuit alleged.
Will telecom companies stop robocalls
As per the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), phone scams yielded a median per-person loss of $1,400 in 2022 in the US. The lawsuit alleged that illegal robocalls are the most common contact method for scammers.
Truecaller data claims that in 2021, India moved to the fourth spot from the ninth spot in a list of countries where users receive the most spam calls. To compare, an Indian phone user receives about 17 spam calls a month on average whereas Brazil gets around 33.
The lawsuit alleged that the company allowed hundreds of millions of calls using spoofed or invalid caller ID numbers. Amongst them, over 8.4 million calls appeared to be coming from government and law enforcement agencies.
Avid Telecom has been accused of selling data, phone numbers, dialling software and expertise to help its customers make mass robocalls. The lawsuit also accused the company of providing its customers with Direct Inward Dialing. It allows callers to fake their area codes so that they match the codes of their receivers. This practice increases the odds of the recipient picking up the phone.

The lawsuit even alleges that Avid Telecom sent or transmitted scam calls about the Social Security Administration, Medicare, auto warranties, Amazon, DirecTV, credit card interest rate reduction and employment.
What the telco has to say
“Contrary to the allegations in the complaint, Avid Telecom operates in a manner that is compliant with all applicable state and federal laws and regulations. The company has never been found by any court or regulatory authority to have transmitted unlawful traffic and it is prepared to meet with the Attorneys General, as it has on many occasions in the past, to further demonstrate its good faith and lawful conduct,” the company’s outside legal counsel, Neil Ende said.