FTC Breaks up Robocall Scheme

FTC announces summary judgment against two individuals, approved six settlement agreements involving 11 defendants, and entered a default judgment against the remaining seven defendants, officially ending the massive Pointbreak Media robocall scheme.  The defendants falsely claimed they were a company that represented Google and sought between $300 and $700 for priority search listing result placement.  The targets were primarily small businesses. 

In May 2018, the FTC charged the Florida-based defendants with operating a telemarketing scam that targeted small business owners with false threats of removal from Google’s search engine and false promises of unique keywords to make the business appear prominently in search results. The FTC also alleged the defendants wrote themselves $100 checks from over 250 businesses’ checking accounts without the business owners’ advance knowledge, consent, or authorization.

The FTC amended its complaint in July 2018 to add two counts for violations of the Telemarketing Sales Rule, because the defendants robocalled more than 74 million consumers and called more than 14 million numbers on the national Do Not Call (DNC) Registry.  The summary judgment and other court orders ban the defendants from such illegal robocalling and direct the scheme’s main perpetrators to pay over $3.3 million.

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The Regulatory Mix Today:  FTC Breaks up Robocall Scheme,  US Senators Urge FCC to Speed 5G Spectrum Deployment

US Senators Urge FCC to Speed 5G Spectrum Deployment

In a recent press release, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation announced that U.S. Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and John Thune, R-S.D., chairman of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet, sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai urging the commission to redouble its efforts to make mid-band spectrum available for 5G.

Excerpts from the letter to Chairman Pai:

“While American companies and those of other western nations are leading the way on technology, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plays a crucial role with regard to spectrum and deployment. Under your leadership, the FCC has made enormous progress in addressing both of these issues. In particular, the FCC has streamlined deployment and moved prudently but with great speed to bring millimeter wave spectrum to the market, completing successful auctions for spectrum in the 24 GHz and 28 GHz bands, and preparing for auctions in the 37 GHz, 39 GHz, and 47 GHz bands.”

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The Regulatory Mix, Inteserra’s blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of an Inteserra Briefing.