Four Robocalling Companies Get Multimillion Dollar Fines From FTC

There’s an ongoing debate about increasing the pressure on robocalling companies in order for them to mend their ways. It has become a serious problem in the country as more than 26 billion robocalls were placed in the United States just last year. The FTC has handed out multimillion dollar fines to four robocalling companies and ordered them to cease operations.

The four companies included an operation which apparently scammed businesses by passing itself off as Google. These companies have been shut down after they settled the lawsuits with the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC announced that these companies made billions of robocalls in the United States. They have now settled the lawsuit and will be paying hefty fines in addition to ceasing their operations. The companies include Higher Goals Marketing, NetDotSolutions, Veterans of America, and Pointbreak Media. The lawsuits were filed against them between late 2017 and mid-2018.

Veterans of America is alleged to have misled people into donating vehicles for a fake veterans charity while Higher Goals sold fake debt relief services to clients. Pointbreak allegedly called small businesses pretending to be Google, warning them that their Google listings will show as “permanently closed” unless they paid hundreds of dollars to keep the listing online. NetDotSolutions licensed TelWeb, an auto-dialing system, to other robocallers while a related company ran call centers for customers who answered the calls.

As part of this settlement, the owners of these companies have been barred from running any other robocalling operation. The fines that have been handed down range from $500,000 to $3.6 million.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: ftc, Social Hit