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The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday cracked down on a massive illegal robocall operation responsible for billions of auto-warranty scam calls in recent years, with regulators imposing a record $300 million fine on what authorities said is the largest such network it has ever investigated.
The globe-spanning illegal operation violated US telecom laws by making more than five billion robocalls to more than half a billion phone numbers over the course of just three months in 2021, the FCC said in a release Wednesday.
But the campaign had been in existence for even longer, the FCC added. Using a multitude of shell companies, aliases and fly-by-night phone providers allegedly under their control, the people behind the network — which CNN has previously reported on — had sought to dupe unwitting consumers into buying shoddy service contracts for their vehicles since 2018.