The Federal Communications Commission proposed a $120 million fine against a robocaller after a Florida man allegedly conducted almost 100 million spoofed calls involving travel offers.
Adrian Abramovich of Miami, Florida, reportedly conducted 96 million spoofed robocalls during a three-month period, the FCC said in a statement Thursday.
Abramovich's operation allegedly used these spoof calls to trick unsuspecting consumers into answering and listening to his advertising messages.
According to the FCC, consumers received calls that appeared to come from local numbers and mentioned well-known travel companies such as Marriott, Expedia, Hilton and TripAdvisor. However, consumers were then transferred to foreign call centers not affiliated with those companies, and live operators attempted to sell vacation packages often involving timeshares, the FFC said.
The FCC was alerted to the scam in 2016, after TripAdvisor investigated complaints from consumers claiming the company had been robocalling them. Additionally, a medical paging provider, Spōk, complained of the robocalling campaign disrupting its network.
"Mr. Abramovich apparently used what has been called 'neighbor spoofing' in hopes of gaining the trust of those receiving the call and increasing the likelihood of their answering," the FCC statement said. "Neighbor spoofing takes place when the caller falsifies the caller ID to match the area code and first three digits of the recipient’s phone number, instead of the caller’s number or the number where the call was actually originating."
The matter was highlighted on social media, with the FCC posting updates on Twitter:
Twitter users responded with complaints about similar spoof calls.