Telecom company responsible for 24.5 billion illegal robocalls facing multi-state lawsuit

A company that behind 24.5 billion robocalls over the past four-plus years is facing a multi-state lawsuit alleging violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and other federal and state telemarketing and consumer laws.

Avid Telecom is responsible for 235 million illegal robocalls in Virginia alone, according to Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, who is a party to the multi-state suit filed on Tuesday.

“Avid Telecom even went as far as spoofing the Caller ID numbers of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, including the Virginia State Police. It’s obvious that the only way to get this organization to stop harassing Virginians is by taking them to court, and holding them accountable,” Miyares said.

Avid Telecom is a Voice over Internet Protocol service provider that sells data, phone numbers, dialing software, and/or expertise to help its customers make mass robocalls. It also serves as an intermediate provider and allegedly facilitated or helped route illegal robocalls across the country.

Between December 2018 and January 2023, Avid sent or attempted to transmit more than 24.5 billion calls. More than 90 percent of those calls lasted less than just 15 seconds, which indicates they were likely robocalls.

Avid also helped make hundreds of millions of calls using spoofed or invalid caller ID numbers, including more than 8.4 million calls that appeared to be coming from government and law enforcement agencies, as well as private companies.

Among its calls were calls involving Social Security Administration scams, Medicare scams, auto warranty scams, Amazon scams, DirecTV scams, credit card interest rate reduction scams, and employment scams.

Examples of some of these scam calls are available to listen to here and here.

The USTelecom-led Industry Traceback Group, which notifies providers about known and suspected illegal robocalls sent across their networks, sent at least 329 notifications to Avid Telecom that it was transmitting these calls, but Avid Telecom continued to do so.

Tuesday’s legal action arises from the nationwide Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force of 51 bipartisan attorneys general. In August, Miyares joined the task force to investigate and take legal action against those responsible for routing significant volumes of illegal robocall traffic into and across the United States.