Rookie robocallers impersonate FCC, accidentally target actual FCC employees

[zohaibahd]

WTF?! A group of robocallers impersonating FCC employees made the amateur mistake of trying to scam actual commission employees last year. They likely had no idea they had inadvertently dialed the very regulators responsible for cracking down on them.

The calls occurred on the night of February 6 and the morning of February 7 last year, as the FCC recently revealed. Over a dozen FCC employees, along with some of their relatives, received automated calls featuring an artificial voice introducing itself as the "FCC Fraud Prevention Team." The robotic voice instructed recipients to press 1 to speak with a representative immediately or 2 to schedule a callback.

One recipient reported being told they needed to fork over $1,000 in Google gift cards to avoid going to jail for "crimes against the state."

Now, the FCC doesn't even have a "Fraud Prevention Team," so as you can imagine, it wasn't too thrilled about having its name dragged like that. In an announcement on Tuesday, the commission proposed a $4.5 million fine against the voice service provider Telnyx, accusing the company of enabling the robocalls by violating "Know Your Customer (KYC)" rules.

Some details about how the robocalls went down have also come to light. On February 6, 2024, Telnyx accepted two new customers using the aliases "Christian Mitchell" and "Henry Walker," who provided fake Canadian addresses and sketchy "mariocop123.com" email domains. The robocallers paid for the service with cryptocurrency to cover their tracks.

Over the next day, the "MarioCop" accounts launched approximately 1,800 calls before Telnyx caught on and shut down the accounts.

From Telnyx's perspective, it provides services that allow businesses to easily build AI voice bots and apps for making automated calls. It likely didn't expect clients to use its platform for low-effort human scam calls – let alone to target federal agency staff.

When contacted by Ars Technica, Telnyx denied the FCC's allegations and said it would contest the penalty. The company will get a chance to respond to these allegations and try to convince the FCC that it shouldn't be fined. In some cases, telecom disputes like this end up settling for a lower amount.

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Rookie robocallers impersonate FCC, accidentally target actual FCC employees

 

[The Talking Tech]

And yet watch the FCC disappear just like the Department of Education under the sickening Trump Administration.

 

[VitalyT]

All regulatory authorities are now falling behind criminal groups, empowered by AI tools. And it will only get worse, as the former see their budgets shrinking consistently, year after year. In the end, anarchy will consume the world.

 

[NumberNine]

Too bad they only get in trouble for calling the government. I wonder how many ordinary people were fleeced before action was taken.

More telecoms need to be held responsible. Paramount can smell me even thinking about clicking a torrent thanks to the ISP backdoors and yet this garbage goes unchecked daily.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Paramount can smell me even thinking about clicking a torrent thanks to the ISP backdoors and yet this garbage goes unchecked daily.

You should be using a private torrent site then! And a VPN

 

[NumberNine]

You should be using a private torrent site then! And a VPN

Absolutely. I haven't received that type of notification in many years.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

You have to absolutely stupid if you believe that you pay off some "fine" to any one calling you through gift cards....wow. If these people are dumb enough to fall for this, they just need to fork over their money to me. At least they'll know where it went instead of paying into some pocket of thieves.

 

[brucek]

You have to absolutely stupid if you believe that you pay off some "fine" to any one calling you through gift cards....wow. If these people are dumb enough to fall for this, they just need to fork over their money to me. At least they'll know where it went instead of paying into some pocket of thieves.

You'd think but unfortunately these scams are big business. Many of them specifically target the elderly (some scripts / callback systems even instruct the scammer to immediately discontinue the call if you find the caller is under a certain age) because they seem to be more vulnerable. It's a shame and I wish there was more we could do to inoculate them, but pretending it's not a big issue isn't the answer.

One reason its such big business is the consequences for perpetrators appear to be next to none. Even here, the penalty being discussed is not on the scammers, but on the service provider.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

culate them,
One reason its such big business is the consequences for perpetrators appear to be next to none. Even here, the penalty being discussed is not on the scammers, but on the service provider.

Because the perpetrators are in other countries where the laws are lax on such things.