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FCC Proposes $120 Million Fine On Florida Robocall Scammer (reuters.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the justice-is-served dept.

The FCC on Thursday proposed a $120 million fine on a Florida resident alleged to have made almost 100 million spoofed robocalls to trick consumers with "exclusive" vacation deals from well-known travel and hospitality companies. Reuters reports: The man, identified as Adrian Abramovich, allegedly made 96 million robocalls during a three-month period by falsifying caller identification information that matched the local area code and the first three digits of recipient's phone number, the FCC said. The calls, which were in violation of the U.S. telecommunications laws, offered vacation deals from companies such as Marriott International Inc, Expedia Inc, Hilton Inc and TripAdvisor Inc. Consumers who answered the calls were transferred to foreign call centers that tried to sell vacation packages, often involving timeshares. These call centers were not related to the companies, the FCC said.

5 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. P R I S O N _ T I M E ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Great, a hefty fine is a good idea. But if he's not in prison for this, you might as well make it legal and tax it - this is a drop in the bucket.

  2. Re:$120 million for one scammer by Cyberpunk+Reality · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Basically what I was going to say. He's not being fined for being a scamming robocaller, he's being fined for doing scamming robocalling *wrong*.

    --
    Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
  3. Re:Illegal? Yes. Too harsh? Even more so... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Too harsh? I'd like to see some jail time too. Otherwise he'll just start up again in a couple years.

  4. Re:Illegal? Yes. Too harsh? Even more so... by markdavis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >"$120,000,000 for 100M calls? That's $1.20 per call.Unless the scammer made $120M in profits, this goes a little beyond punitive."

    Sorry, but that sounds about right to me. He irritated people over 100 million times. That is a lot of bad. The problem is that they rarely fine anyone and rarely collect any of it, anyway.

    If they do, they should use all that money to hunt down and destroy as many marketing, spam, political, and robocallers as possible. Or perhaps use the money to force the stupid carriers out there to NOT ALLOW SPOOFING LIKE THIS.

  5. Re:Illegal? Yes. Too harsh? Even more so... by clampolo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Simple punishment. He has to sit in a jail cell and listen to his ad for 100M times before he leaves his cell