Telecom company Avid sued after more than 7.5 billion illegal robocalls

May 25, 2023 Rob Abruzzese

Attorney General, Letitia James is leading the charge against Avid Telecom, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service provider and their top executives for ignoring repeated warnings that it was breaking the law. Photo: Seth Wenig/AP.

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With the amount of illegal robocalls every person receives on a regular basis, a person might believe that the government does nothing to stop them.

However, Attorney General Letitia James showed on Tuesday that there is a limit to how much companies can get away with and it only took more than 7.5 billion illegal phone calls.

“Americans are sick and tired of their phones ringing off the hook with fraudulent robocalls,” said Attorney General James. “Seniors and vulnerable consumers have been scammed out of millions because of these illegal robocalls.”

James is leading the charge against Avid Telecom, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service provider and their top executives, Michael Lansky and Stacey S. Reeves.

James, backed by an Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force comprising 51 attorneys general, sued the company for facilitating billions of illegal robocalls. According to the lawsuit, Avid Telecom allegedly flouted a myriad of warnings, carrying out their relentless robocalling campaign even to those registered on the National Do Not Call Registry.

Avid’s operations allowed their customers to make mass robocalls using ‘spoofed’ caller ID numbers that matched the area code of the recipient, increasing the chances of someone answering the call. As a result, a bulk of these calls were impersonating government and law enforcement agencies, or private companies, and engaged in various scams.

Despite receiving at least 329 notifications from the USTelecom-led Industry Traceback Group to cease illegal robocalling, Avid apparently dismissed the memo, continuing to send those illegal robocalls.

The lawsuit accuses Avid Telecom of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and other federal and state telemarketing and consumer laws. The plaintiff states are seeking a judgment to stop Avid from making and transmitting illegal calls and to pay civil penalties, restitution, and damages.