A man has been fined $120 million after making 96 million “illegal telemarketing robocalls” in just three months, according to a report.
Adrian Abramovich, from Miami, also made many of his calls to numbers on the “National Do Not Call Registry,” and attempted to trick people into signing up for time-shares.
The Federal Communications Commission branded Abramovich’s actions “one of the largest — and most dangerous — illegal robocalling campaigns that the Commission has ever investigated.”
“Abramovich was allegedly even sending calls over emergency phone lines used for medical professionals and hospital call centers,” reported the Miami New Times on Friday. “According to complaints sent to the FCC, homeowners have said for years that robocalls have been trying to get them to sign up for fake free trips or vacations. The robocalls would tell the victims to ‘press 1’ to hear more about exclusive vacation deals with companies such as TripAdvisor, Expedia, Hilton, and Marriott and then route anyone who fell for the scam to a call center, where the perpetrators would try to hook gullible customers into buying time-shares that had nothing to do with those companies.”
“Eventually, TripAdvisor got wind of the illegal calling campaigns and launched its own investigation, which traced the calls back to Abramovich, who ran a company called Marketing Strategy Leaders out of 2000 Bayshore Dr., a swanky address in the gated Coconut Grove community L’Hermitage,” they continued. “In April 2016, TripAdvisor tipped off the FCC.”
Abramovich is reported to have been making over one million robocalls a day.
“Robocalling is consistently the top-ranked category of complaints that consumers bring to the FCC,” claimed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai at a meeting on Thursday. “That’s why I’m pleased that today the Commission is taking major, unprecedented action against what appears to be the most egregious ‘neighbor spoofing’ robocalling scheme we have ever seen.”
Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.