Federal Trade Commission Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine told Newsmax Monday that the FTC's new crackdown on robocalls is "going to make a real difference."
"The sweep that we announced last week is the largest crackdown in U.S. history on illegal telemarketing," Levine said during an appearance on Newsmax's "National Report." "It involves more than 100 enforcers, state and federal, civil and criminal, bipartisan and involves more than 180 actions to crack down on this telemarketing. We are confident that by targeting not only telemarketers, but, in addition, those who enable them, like VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol] providers and consent farms, we're going to make a real difference in making robocalls less of a nuisance for American families."
Discussing the case of New York-based media company Fluent, which allegedly operated as a "consent farm" to trick nearly 1 million people a day into getting robocalls, Levine said that "a common misconception is that telemarketing only emerges from boiler rooms.
"But what we saw in this case is a lot of telemarketing out of, essentially, boardrooms," he said. "This is a publicly traded firm that was, as we allege in our complaint, tricking consumers into turning over their personal information using lures of prizes or job opportunities, which many Americans are looking for. Those Americans turned over their personal information only for Fluent, according to our complaint, to sell that personal information to telemarketers so that consumers would be blasted with calls.
"This is a real problem," he continued. "Fluent, we allege, sold more than 600 million leads to telemarketers and we're confident that our action against Fluent, which banned them from the robocall business and imposed a civil penalty, should send a clear message to other operators out there that these practices are not going to be tolerated."
Many unwanted robocalls originate overseas, but Levine said they wouldn't arrive on Americans' phones if VoIP providers weren't helping direct them through the U.S. telecom system.
"These VoIP providers are the middlemen between the overseas telemarketers and you and I trying to avoid unwanted calls," he said. "That's why, in addition to targeting telemarketers and consent farms as part of this sweep, we also took action against a number of VoIP providers to make clear that if you are assisting telemarketers, whether they're here or overseas, we're prepared to hold you accountable, in addition to the telemarketers themselves."
About NEWSMAX TV:
NEWSMAX is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America!