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The Indiana Attorney General’s Office has worked to combat illegal scam callers and reached several hefty settlements against offending companies and providers.
The office announced this week that it led 49 bipartisan attorneys general from the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force against Avid Telecom, a company which sent 24 billion problematic calls during a 4-year period.
Avid Telecom even continued transmitting robocalls despite hundreds of warnings that illegal phone calls were being transmitted across their networks.
The Arizona District Court ruled against Avid Telecom’s motion to dismiss, which allowed for Indiana’s Date Privacy&ID Theft team to hold the company accountable.
Attorney General Todd Rokita’s anti-robocaller attorneys pursued defendants who were responsible for hitting Hoosiers with more than 25 million scam calls in less than one year, taking advantage of everything from auto insurance claims to DirectTV payments.
“Everyone knows robocallers are a huge nuisance, but they pose dangers much worse than merely disturbing our peace,” Rokita said in a news release. “Quite often, these robocalls are part of criminal schemes aimed at stealing Hoosiers’ identity and taking our hard-earned money. These annoying and illegal calls are the work of professional scammers looking to prey on unsuspecting victims. That’s why we have fought robocallers so doggedly since my first day in office, issuing around $392 million in fines and settlements from robocalling operations.”
Defendants, like John Caldwell Spiller II, the owner of Texas-based Rising Eagle Capital Group LLC and JSquared Telecom LLC, spoofed phone numbers and bypassed both federal and Indiana “Do Not Call” lists to target their victims.
Also, Rokita’s office was able to secure an industry-wide ban against Startel Communication, and other injunctive terms against providers like VoIP Essential and Piratel, and callers like Eric Simkin and Greg Sheppard, according to a news release.
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