The Federal Communications Commission on Aug. 3 announced it had levied a record $300 million fine against vehicle service contract telemarketers running “the largest illegal robocall operation the agency has ever investigated.”
The illegal service contract marketing scheme dated to at least 2018 and included more than 5 billion automated calls to more than 500 million phone numbers in just three months in 2021, the FCC said. The group’s communications with customers included a prerecorded message beginning, “‘We’ve been trying to reach you concerning your car’s extended warranty,'” the FCC said.
The group’s alleged violations included breaking federal “spoofing” laws by using more than 1 million caller ID numbers to fool consumers into answering their phones, calling Do Not Call numbers, making telemarketing calls without consumer consent and failing to offer an opt-out number.
The FCC last year directed and authorized phone service providers to quit carrying calls from suspicious numbers associated with the alleged scheme.
“We worked to identify who was sending these junk calls —more than five billion of them! — and then armed with the facts gave phone companies permission to cut off this traffic before going one step further and directing them to block it outright,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, who said she received one of the calls, said in a statement Aug. 3. “We got results.”
The FCC’s fine comes a few months after the FTC announced Tony Gonzalez, his brother Charles Gonzalez, the joint service contract companies American Vehicle Protection and CG3 Solutions and the Tony Gonzalez Consulting Group agreed to lifetime telemarketing bans and a mostly suspended $6.5 million judgment to settle allegations their “extended automobile warranty” telemarketing misrepresented their coverage and violated the Do Not Call registry.