120 million fine for 96 million spoofed robocalls

The FCC has proposed its largest ever fine, $120 million, on a man from Florida accused of making 96 million illegal, spoofed robocalls over only three months. Adrian Abramovich, from Miami, made the spoofed robocalls “selling” timeshares and vacations.

The chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, has commented on this case because of the size of the case and the possibility that Abramovich’s illegal operation may have disrupted medical services. Pai says this scheme “appears to have substantially disrupted the operations of an emergency medical paging provider. It did this by slowing down and potentially disabling its network. Pagers may be low tech, but for doctors these devices are simple and dependable standbys.”

The FCC is taking the action against Abramovich based on the 2009 Truth in Caller ID act which addresses caller ID spoofing. Spoofed calls alter the true caller ID, making it appear as if the call is coming from someone in the recipient’s local area. Abramovich not only used spoofing to make his millions of robocalls, but he also deceived millions by telling them they were buying vacations from reputable companies like TripAdvisor and Expedia. When consumers said they were interested, they were sent to a call center that was, in reality, selling low quality vacations and timeshares.

Before the fines by the FCC are officially filed, Abramovich is given a chance to respond to the filings by the FCC.

This case reinforces the work that needs to continue to reduce the negative impact around spoofed robocalls. TransNexus has written about STIR and SHAKEN, technology frameworks developed to combat caller ID spoofing, and we're hopeful the technology will be in place soon to help combat illegal robocalls.

Learn more about the TransNexus solutions that can help your organization combat unwanted robocalls, and keep coming back to the TransNexus blog to keep up with all the developments around fraud control, STIR, and SHAKEN.