Lawsuit Against Avid Telecom Represents The Rokita Administration’s Fifth Major Case Against Robocallers
Attorney General Todd Rokita has filed a lawsuit against an Arizona-based company allegedly responsible for facilitating billions of robocalls.
As part of a coalition of 48 states and the District of Columbia, Attorney General Rokita sued Michael D. Lansky LLC — which does business under the name Avid Telecom. The lawsuit also names owner Michael Lansky and a vice president, Stacey S. Reeves.
“Hoosiers are sick and tired of these annoying robocalls that not only interrupt their lives but also violate state and federal laws,†Attorney General Rokita said. “Rest assured that we will keep going after these illegal robocallers with the same dogged aggressiveness that we’ve shown since Day One.â€
The complaint alleges that Avid Telecom sent or transmitted more than 7.5 billion calls to telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry — violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and other federal and state telemarketing and consumer laws.
Avid Telecom is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service provider that sells data, phone numbers, dialing software, and/or expertise to help its customers make mass robocalls.
The company allegedly sent or transmitted scam calls representing Social Security Administration scams, Medicare scams, auto warranty scams, Amazon scams, DirecTV scams, credit card interest rate reduction scams, and employment scams. You may listen to examples of some of these scam calls here and here.
The USTelecom-led Industry Traceback Group, which notifies providers about known and suspected illegal robocalls sent across their networks, sent at least 329 notifications to Avid Telecom that it was transmitting these calls, but Avid Telecom continued to do so.
Attorney General Rokita has already sued one of Avid Telecom’s customers in Texas federal court. Avid Telecom helped that customer send more than 4 billion robocalls between May 2019 and March 2021.
This legal action arises from the nationwide Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force of 51 bipartisan attorneys general. Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina lead the task force — which is investigating and taking legal action against those responsible for routing significant volumes of illegal robocall traffic into and across the United States.
The Federal Trade Commission and the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General provided investigative assistance in this matter.
