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- The FCC just fined a group of scammers a record-breaking $299,970,000.
- The commission said the fraudsters made 5 billion auto warranty-related scam calls in three months.
- Two of the men charged, Roy M. Cox and Aaron Michael Jones, had already previously been banned from making telemarketing calls.
The Federal Communications Commission fined an international network of robocallers nearly $299,970,000 on Thursday for executing "a scheme to make more than five billion robocalls to more than 500 million phone numbers during a three-month span in 2021," according to a press release.
The FCC said the scheme consisted of scammers robocalling unsuspecting Americans with pre-recorded messages about auto warranty, sometimes to people who have already placed their phone numbers on the national Do Not Call Registry, while also failing to leave a call-back number leaving victims unable to opt out of future calls.
According to the FCC, two of the people ensnared in the robocalling operation were Roy M. Cox and Aaron Michael Jones, two fraudsters who previously were given lifetime bans on making telemarketing calls due to lawsuits from the State of Texas and the Federal Trade Commission.
The FCC said it foiled Cox and Jones' robocalling scheme in 2022 by directing all American-based voice providers to stop working with phone numbers associated with the scam, an action the commission said plummeted illegal auto warranty-related robocalls by 99 percent.
Cox, Jones, and the rest of the robocallers fined by the FCC were given a chance to respond to the commission after it proposed the record-breaking fine in 2022, however, the FCC said the parties never did, "resulting in today's unprecedented fine."
Insider previously published an analysis in February detailing how robocallers are spoofing the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' toll-free hotline number in an attempt to bilk unsuspecting seniors. Additionally, Insider reported that the prevalence of COVID-related phone scams have risen in 2023, three years after the virus shut down the country.