Attorney General William Tong has filed a lawsuit against Avid Telecom for allegedly initiating and facilitating billions of illegal robocalls to millions of people in the state.
Tong's office announced that they sued Michael D. Lansky and Stacey S. Reeves, the president and vice president of Avid Telecom.
The attorney general alleges that the robocalls violate the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule and other and other federal and state telemarketing and consumer laws.
Avid Telecom allegedly sent or transmitted over 7.5 billion calls to people on the National Do Not Call Registry, according to Tong. More than 87.6 million of those calls were to numbers in Connecticut alone.
Get Connecticut local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Connecticut newsletters.
“Avid Telecom and its owners transmitted billions of illegal robocalls and enabled criminal spammers to prey on American families. In coordination with nearly every attorney general nationwide, we are suing today to shut down these fraud enablers and hold them accountable for the massive harm they have caused,” said Tong.
Avid Telecom is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service provider that sells data, phone numbers, dialing software and expertise to help its customers make mass robocalls. According to Tong, the company allegedly facilitated or helped route illegal robocalls across the country.
Local
The company helped to make robocalls using spoofed or invalid caller ID numbers, including several million that appears to be coming from government and law enforcement agencies, as well as private companies.
“Not only are constant robocalls annoying, they are used to carry out scams and fraud against unsuspecting consumers,” said Department of Consumer Protection Commissioner Bryan T. Cafferelli. “If you answer a call from an unknown number, be wary. If the caller or pre-recorded message claims to be from a government agency such as the IRS or Social Security Administration, it is likely a scam. Typically, these agencies don’t make phone calls to individuals. Hang up immediately if they ask you for personal information, or to make a payment by gift card, wire transfer, or cryptocurrency.”
The lawsuit was a decision made by the nationwide Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force of 51 bipartisan attorneys general.
