Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall filed a lawsuit against the owner and vice president of a telemarketing company responsible for billions of robocalls nationwide.
Avid Telecom is owned by Michael Lansky. Marshall claims Lansky and Stacey S. Reeves, the company's vice president, violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule, along with other consumer laws.
"One thing that unites all Alabamians is our hatred of robocalls," said Marshall. "In recent years, robocalls have become more than a nuisance, and often are opportunities for scammers to steal money and prey upon our citizens. My office will continue to aggressively enforce our consumer protection laws to combat these practices."
Data shows that Avid Telecom sent more than 7.5 billion calls already on the National Do Not Call Registry. Over 147 million of those were to Alabama numbers.
"Between December 2018 and January 2023, Avid sent or attempted to transmit more than 24.5 billion calls," the AG's office claims. "More than 90% of those calls lasted less than just 15 seconds, which indicates they were likely robocalls. Further, Avid helped make hundreds of millions of calls using spoofed or invalid caller ID numbers, including more than 8.4 million calls that appeared to be coming from government and law enforcement agencies, as well as private companies."
Several law enforcement agencies in Alabama and Alabama Power have sent numerous warnings to consumers about these types of scammer calls. Other spoof calls have come from numbers that appear to be with the Social Security Administration, medicare, auto warranty companies, Amazon and DirecTV.
Listen to sample calls here and here
The lawsuit Marshall filed is part of the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force of 51 bipartisan attorneys general. Other AGs that joined the lawsuit are from Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, D.C., Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email erica.thomas@1819news.com.
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