Attorney General Ford Begins Phase 2 of Operation Robocall Roundup, Announces Investigation of Major Service Providers Inteliquent, Bandwidth, Lumen and Peerless

Carson City, NV — Today, Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford announced Phase 2 of Operation Robocall Roundup, expanding the crackdown on illegal robocalls to include four of the largest voice providers in the country. As part of an ongoing investigation, the bipartisan Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force has directed Inteliquent, Bandwidth, Lumen and Peerless to stop transmitting suspected illegal robocalls across their networks.

“These illegal robocalls are a frequent and exasperating nuisance to Nevadans,” said Attorney General Ford. “These companies know their responsibilities to Nevadans and have continued to ignore them. We will not let that continue — these voice providers must take the steps needed to ensure they are compliant with federal rules and to stop this deluge of robocalls.”

In August, Attorney General Ford sent warning letters to 37 smaller voice providers that were allowing suspected illegal robocalls onto the U.S. telephone network. This next phase targets companies with far larger footprints in the U.S. telecom ecosystem. The four companies are continuing to transmit hundreds of thousands — and in some cases, millions — of suspected illegal robocalls.

The below chart shows the scale of suspected illegal robocall activity linked to each company. The first column reflects how many traceback notices each company has received since 2019. A traceback notice is an official alert from industry investigators indicating that a company transmitted a call tied to a suspected illegal robocall campaign. The next two columns estimate the major scam categories — such as fake Amazon, Apple, Social Security, or IRS calls — that moved through each company’s network. Together, the data shows both the specific types of scams these companies helped transmit and the staggering volume of robocalls flowing across their systems.

Scope of Suspected Illegal Robocall Activity 

As larger providers, these companies have a heightened responsibility to decline call traffic from known and repeat bad actors. Despite extensive industry traceback notices and years of documented warnings, these four providers continue to route suspected illegal robocalls onto the network and into American homes.

After sending warning letters to 37 companies, the Task Force saw rapid, measurable changes:

• 13 companies were removed from the FCC’s Robocall Mitigation Database, meaning no provider in the United States may accept their call traffic. 
• 19 companies stopped appearing in any traceback results, indicating they ceased routing suspected illegal robocalls. 
• At least four providers terminated high-risk customer accounts identified as transmitting illegal traffic.

In 2022, 51 attorneys general joined forces to create the Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force, which is led by North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. The Task Force investigates and takes legal action against companies responsible for significant volumes of illegal and fraudulent robocall traffic routed into and across the United States.

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