New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport is urging federal regulators to adopt tougher rules aimed at cutting off scammers’ access to legitimate telephone numbers, saying stronger safeguards are needed to stem billions of illegal robocalls and protect consumers from fraud.
Davenport on Tuesday co-led a bipartisan coalition of 49 attorneys general in submitting recommendations to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), calling for stricter oversight of companies that purchase and distribute telephone numbers. The proposal is intended to make it more difficult for scammers to obtain legitimate phone numbers that can be used to disguise fraudulent calls and text messages.
“Robocalls aren’t just annoying and illegal. They expose New Jerseyans to rampant scams and fraud that threaten their life’s savings,” Davenport said in a statement. “While states like New Jersey will continue to enforce the law to hold scammers accountable, preventing unwanted robocalls in the first place requires meaningful action from the FCC.”
According to the coalition, Americans received an estimated 29.6 billion scam robocalls and text messages last year, resulting in nearly $2 billion in financial losses. While previous enforcement efforts have significantly reduced the practice of illegally “spoofing” caller IDs, scammers have increasingly shifted to purchasing legitimate phone numbers, making fraudulent calls appear more credible.
The attorneys general are asking the FCC to require stronger certification standards for companies authorized to buy and resell telephone numbers, mandate regular reporting that allows law enforcement to trace suspicious activity, require applicants to certify they will not use numbers for illegal robocalls, prohibit the sale of numbers to entities without legitimate calling or texting services, ban the practice of rapidly cycling through large numbers of phone numbers to evade spam filters, and restrict free trial phone numbers that are frequently exploited by scammers.
The latest initiative builds on several years of New Jersey’s efforts to combat illegal robocalls.
In 2022, then-Acting Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced a formal partnership with the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau to coordinate investigations into illegal robocall operations. The agreement gave New Jersey investigators greater access to federal investigative resources, including subpoena assistance, consumer complaint data, and collaboration with other federal agencies and robocall-blocking companies.
That partnership followed other enforcement actions by the Attorney General’s Office, including New Jersey’s participation in a multistate lawsuit that permanently shut down a charitable fundraising operation accused of placing approximately 1.3 billion deceptive fundraising calls while collecting more than $110 million from donors.
State officials have also joined multistate litigation against telecommunications companies accused of facilitating billions of illegal robocalls by transmitting scam calls involving fake Social Security benefits, Medicare, auto warranties, Amazon purchases, credit card offers and other fraudulent schemes.
The coalition argues that additional federal action is necessary because scammers have adapted to earlier anti-spoofing measures by exploiting legitimate telephone numbers instead. In one investigation cited by the attorneys general, scammers placed more than 17 million robocalls in a single day through one telephone company while rarely using the same phone number more than twice, making it difficult for spam-filtering technology to identify and block the calls.
The attorneys general urged the FCC to adopt the proposed rules, saying limiting scammers’ access to telephone numbers would significantly reduce their ability to target consumers across the country.
