Three New Jersey brothers will pay $1.6 million to settle charges of instigating more than 45 million illegal robocalls nationwide, including to tens of millions of Americans on the Federal Trade Commission’s Do Not Call Registry, the agency announced on Friday.
The siblings also agreed to a permanent ban on telemarketing and will hand over a residential property to resolve the agency’s allegations, made in a complaint filed by Department of Justice on behalf of the FTC.
According to the FTC’s suit, Joseph, Sean and Raymond Carney initiated more than 45 million illegal telemarketing calls to people across the U.S. between January 2018 and March 2019 to pitch a line of septic tank cleaning products. Most of the calls, or 31 million, were placed to numbers on the FTC’s registry of people who don’t want to receive marketing calls.
Telemarketers working on behalf of the brothers falsely told consumers they were calling from an environmental company to offer free information on their septic tank cleaning products, the complaint charges.
Instead, people staying on the call allegedly got a sales pitch. People who bought the products and had outstanding balances were falsely told they would be referred to an attorney or collection agency, according to the government.
“The defendants continued to call consumers despite the consumers having told the defendants to stop calling and to place the consumers’ telephone number on the defendants’ internal do not call list,” the complaint states.
The Federal Communications Commission last month started requiring wireless companies to adopt authentication technology to block robocalls. Americans got roughly 4 billion spam calls in May alone, according to the makers of call blocking app YouMail.
“We want to stop robocalls and make it easier for consumers to safely answer the phone, Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel recently told CBS News Consumer Investigative Correspondent Anna Werner.
About time someone is getting punished for their scams. Now Government should do something about the monopoly / price fixing of Insurance companies utility companies, oil companies to start with and continue with other companies including the tech companies.
I called a friend the other day and they have a ROBOapp to make sure I wasn’t a Robo call. Really people ? If you are getting all these calls your personal information is out there and your practices are not secure. I maybe get a dozen a year. You don’t answer and then block the number. Have strong passwords change them often and NEVER opt for TEXTED verification codes and don’t proffer your phone number for anything. Often times it’s organizations like AAA,AARP the NRA and political affiliates that are selling your personal information.
They have all of the numbers that they illegally called, but those who got call after call get zero $$.