Targeted companies helped place hundreds of millions of scam calls every month
The government announced first-of-its-kind steps Tuesday to stop hundreds of millions of predatory robocalls every month from entering the U.S. to perpetrate costly impostor scams against Americans, including many older victims.
The groundbreaking civil actions are aimed at shutting down firms in Long Island, New York, and Scottsdale, Arizona, that provide internet services and act as “gateway carriers” for calls from overseas, mostly from India, Department of Justice (DOJ) officials said.
In impostor scams, criminals pose as representatives of the Social Security Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or another agency, in a bid to trick people into giving them money under threat or as a remedy for a bogus problem. The threats include arrest and court actions and are “often terrifying,” and they are “terrifyingly successful,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney General Jody Hunt. In 2019 alone, the Federal Trade Commission heard more than 400,000 complaints of impostor scams resulting in more than $150 million in losses, Hunt said, mostly to older victims.
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