An Arizona telecom company accused of facilitating some 7.5 billion robocalls to households on the National Do Not Call Registry is facing a lawsuit from a coalition of attorneys general from nearly every state in the country, The Washington Post reports.
The complaint, which was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court (District of Arizona), alleges that Avid Telecom routed calls and found ways to spoof the phone numbers to boost the odds that such calls would be picked up, the report said.
The complaint further alleges Avid executives ignored warnings from an industry group designated by the Federal Communications Commission to report spam calls that issued at least 329 notifications to the company.
The complaint filed by the attorneys general of 48 states and the District of Columbia.
“Every day, millions of American consumers receive a barrage of unwanted robocalls that are harassing, annoying, threatening, and malicious,” the complaint said.
“These calls are all scams designed to scare and harm consumers. Other robocalls may not be scams but are harassing, abusive, and illegal, nonetheless.”
Avid in a statement obtained by CNBC said the company has “never been found by any court or regulatory authority to have transmitted unlawful traffic,” and that the company is prepared to meet with the AGs to “demonstrate its lawful conduct.”
“Contrary to the allegations in the complaint, Avid Telecom operates in a manner that is compliant with all applicable state and federal laws and regulations,” the company’s statement said.
Many of the robocalls are associated with scams, according to the report, which notes that Avid facilitated around 21 billion calls to U.S. phone numbers over a period of just over four years (from December 2018 to January 2023), of which 93 percent lasted less than 15 seconds, a preliminary review of call records cited in the complaint shows.
The calls include those falsely claiming to be from government agencies such as Social Security and Medicare and customer service representatives from Amazon and DirectTV, among other brands.
