Sunshine Sentinel

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—Attorney General Ashley Moody is taking legal action against a Voice Over Internet Protocol service provider for facilitating billions of illegal robocalls. Attorney General Moody, with 48 other attorneys general, filed a complaint against Michael D. Lansky, LLC, d/b/a Avid Telecom, its owner Michael Lansky, and its vice president Stacey S. Reeves, for allegedly initiating and facilitating billions of illegal robocalls to millions of people. The complaint alleges the company violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and other federal and state telemarketing and consumer protection laws. Avid Telecom sent or transmitted more than 7.5 billion calls to telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry—approximately 619 million of those calls were placed to Floridians on the registry.

Attorney General Ashley Moody said, “We’re taking legal action against Avid Telecom for blatantly sending billions of illegal robocalls within a span of four years, including scam calls about Social Security, Medicare, auto warranty and more. The service provider was put on notice more than 300 times about their illicit activity and the company continued to flagrantly violate consumer protection and telemarketing laws—this is unacceptable, and we are seeking injunctive relief to better protect consumers.”

Avid Telecom is a VoIP service provider that sells data, phone numbers, dialing software, and/or expertise to help its customers make mass robocalls. It also serves as an intermediate provider and allegedly facilitated illegal robocalls by routing them across the country. Between December 2018 and January 2023, Avid sent or attempted to transmit more than 24.5 billion calls. More than 90% of those calls lasted less than 15 seconds, which indicates they were very likely unwanted 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. 

Avid Telecom allegedly sent or transmitted scam calls impersonating the Social Security Administration, as well as perpetrating Medicare scams, auto warranty scams, Amazon scams, DirecTV scams, credit card interest rate reduction scams and employment scams. Examples of some of these scam calls are available to listen to here and here.

The legal action arises from the nationwide Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force of 51 bipartisan attorneys general. The task force 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 SSA's Office of the Inspector General provided investigative assistance in this matter.

Attorney General Moody is joined in filing the complaint by the attorneys general of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, 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 view a copy of the complaint, click here.

Original source can be found here.