Attorney General Alan Wilson joined a multistate coalition asking federal regulators to cut off scammers’ access to legitimate phone numbers used in robocalls.
Based on a release from S.C. Attorney General.
Attorney General Alan Wilson and 48 other attorneys general called on the Federal Communications Commission to strengthen rules aimed at making it harder for scammers to make robocalls from legitimate telephone numbers, according to the S.C. Attorney General’s Office.
The letter, sent by the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, responds to proposed FCC rules following a request the coalition first made to the agency in 2021, according to the office.
“Robocalls aren’t just annoying, they’re often illegal,” Wilson said. “People are sick and tired of them, and I’m working with attorneys general from around the country to go after these scams that victimize South Carolinians.”
Americans received approximately 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts last year and lost nearly $2 billion to the scams, according to the office.
Scammers previously relied on illegally “spoofing” other people’s phone numbers to appear as legitimate companies or government agencies, but that tactic has become harder after federal and state action, according to the office. Scammers now often purchase legitimate phone numbers and cycle through millions of new numbers to avoid detection by spam filters, unlike legitimate businesses that typically keep the same number for years.
In one North Carolina case, scammers made more than 17.3 million calls in a single day through one phone company, generally using each number no more than twice, according to the office.
Wilson was joined in signing the letter by attorneys general from 47 other states, the District of Columbia and American Samoa, according to the office.
