Enforcement Operation with FTC to Tackle Illegal Spam Calls
Texas Attorney General’s Office
AUSTIN – The Office of the Attorney General (“OAG”) has announced that Texas, along with the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and a coalition of law enforcement partners nationwide, is conducting Operation Stop Scam Calls to combat the nationwide problem of illegal telemarketing and robocalls by which companies and scammers target and harass U.S. consumers.
The joint state and federal law enforcement sweep aims to deter and punish illegal telemarketers and anyone else who enables their unlawful conduct, including the companies who hire them, lead generators who provide them with consumers’ contact information, and the Voice over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”) service providers who transmit their calls to U.S. consumers.
By joining this coalition, the OAG aims to protect the people of Texas from deceitful telemarketing companies and the nuisance of spam calls. As part of Operation Stop Scam Calls, the OAG previously filed a multistate lawsuit against Michael D. Lansky, LLC, which does business under the name Avid Telecom, its owner Michael Lansky, and its vice president Stacey S. Reeves for the alleged initiation and facilitation of billions of robocalls, including hundreds of millions of unlawful calls made to numbers in Texas.
The OAG also shut down a massive Texas-based robocall operation in March 2023, securing judgments totaling over $244 million against two individuals operating an illegal robocall scheme that affected millions of Americans.
Alongside Texas and the FTC, other contributing law enforcement agencies include the attorneys general from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Federal Communications Commission. The OAG provides more information on preventing phone scams here. Guidance from the FTC can be found here.
