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FTC Targets Group That Made Billions of Robocalls

Posted by samzenpus on from the don't-call-me-bro dept.

coondoggie writes Given the amount of time the FTC and others have put into curing the robocall problem, it is disheartening to hear that a group of companies for almost a year have been making billions of illegal robocalls. The Federal Trade Commission and 10 state attorneys general today said they have settled charges against a Florida-based cruise line company and seven other companies that averaged 12 million to 15 million illegal sales calls a day between October 2011 through July 2012, according to the joint complaint filed by the FTC and the states.

9 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. And was it really a punishment? by SeaFox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Unless they settled to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, I don't see how we're going to make any progress on this.

    1. Re:And was it really a punishment? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Is that a good idea? If you kill the telemarketers with CIA's killer robots, how are you going to poison the NSA database of all the phone calls? The more telemarketers we have, the more shit the NSA has to sift through.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:And was it really a punishment? by bobf0648 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unless they settled to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, I don't see how we're going to make any progress on this.

      The solution is hard jail time. I don't mean easy-living jail, I mean the baddest damn federal prison. And not just for the boss, but for everyone involved.

    3. Re:And was it really a punishment? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      using CIA killer robots on ... telemarketers. They have to stick out like a sore thumb in call traffic analysis, and I'm pretty sure that 'the corporate veil' is not rated to withstand most contemporary munitions.

      +1.

      Just like with spammers, the behavior will continue until those who are engaging in it start dying because of it.

  2. Have Settled Charges? by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Insightful

    WTF does "settled charges" mean? Who went to jail? Who was prosecuted? Where and when was the court case?

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    1. Re: Have Settled Charges? by Alain+Williams · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would like to know: the next time that I receive a £60 parking ticket will the authorities be content with me paying £5?

    2. Re: Have Settled Charges? by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, not only is the civil settlement (not criminal - nobody's going to jail) ludicrous in size, it's also ludicrous that they act like it takes a multi-year investigation to figure out who's making the calls. It's not difficult, you use their service and then find out who did what. Given normal police detective work it should take up to a week tops to shut one of these operations down.

      I love how they're still talking about taking Rachel from cardholder services down a couple of years ago. How stupid can these people be? I still get calls from Rachel as well as her sister Bridgette. Hell, she even has a brother.

      Their needs to be a way to take these people's assets and throw them in jail. It's sad that we can steal a Mexican guy's cash at the side of the road because he might be a drug dealer (not that we can prove it or that we need to prove it) but get caught running an illegal business - exactly, by the way, exactly what asset forfeiture laws were created for - and you get a civil settlement of $500,000. No investigation into how much money was actually made.

      You know this guy is still doubled over in his mansion laughing at the schmucks at the FTC who were stupid enough to settle for half a million.

      --
      Do you have ESP?
  3. As always, the settlement teaches the wrong lesson by sirwired · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As always, the FTC "settlement" consists of nothing more than the bad guys having to mail a check for the money they haven't yet shipped off-shore and promising to Go Forth and Sin No More. Why does the FTC even bother? How is that supposed to deter anybody?

    Such a settlement might make sense if this was some minor paperwork violation of an obscure regulation, but these guys were simply pretending the law didn't exist, yet they still get off with a slap on the wrist.

  4. Re:As always, the settlement teaches the wrong les by Ken+D · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You know when someone gets convicted of computer hacking they often get banned from using computers / the internet. Maybe these guys should get banned from using telephones.