Commissioner Brendan Carr (pictured) wants $4.5 million fine on Telnyx, for enabling “illegal robocall  scheme.”

KYC Isn’t a Thing, Claims Telco

What’s the craic? Zo Ahmed reports: Rookie robocallers impersonate FCC, accidentally target actual FCC employees

“It wasn’t too thrilled”
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.
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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.” … 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.”
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[But] the FCC doesn’t even have a “Fraud Prevention Team,” so as you can imagine, it wasn’t too thrilled. [It] proposed a $4.5 million fine against the voice service provider Telnyx, accusing the company of enabling the robocalls.

What does Telnyx have to say for itself? Sergiu Gatlan adds: Robocallers posing as FCC … call FCC staff

“Telnyx denied all allegations”
The individuals behind these calls registered Telnyx accounts using the “Christian Mitchell” and “Henry Walker” names with the same address in Toronto, Canada, but IP addresses from Scotland and England. … They both used email addresses on the same mariocop123.com domain. Between February 6 and February 7, 2024, they made 1,797 imposter calls before Telnyx terminated their accounts.
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According to the FCC, Telnyx failed to take the necessary measures to prevent malicious actors from using its VoIP network. … Such measures include requesting copies of government-issued identification, corporate formation records, and third-party records of a customer’s physical address to verify the identity of customers who request access to services that would allow them to make a significant volume of calls.
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Telnyx denied all allegations [and] said the “FCC’s Notice of Apparent Liability is factually mistaken. … Telnyx has done everything and more than the FCC has required for Know-Your-Customer (‘KYC’) and customer due diligence procedures. … More importantly, the FCC is mistaken about the … standards that apply to the industry. The FCC’s own regulations have long stated that perfection in mitigating illegal traffic is not required.”

Horse’s mouth? FCC chairman Brendan Carr is legally nuanced: Carr Proposes A Nearly $4.5 Million Fine

“Apparently illegal”
Cracking down on illegal robocalls will be a top priority at the FCC. That is why I am pleased that our first Commission-level action is a bipartisan vote in favor of this nearly $4.5 million proposed fine. This fine flows from an apparently illegal robocalling scheme.

Interesting choice of wording: It “will be a top priority.” alt_tabby asks the obvious question:

Apparently the FCC does have the ability to track down robocallers and this appears to be their first serious effort, so why has it taken so long for this action?

Why indeed? NumberNine now knows why:

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.

Should we be surprised, though? blackeyeblitzar isn’t:

Not surprising. These phone call and text messaging platforms almost always look the other way when they have customers doing illegal things, on purpose. It’s how they make money.
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Sinch (aka Inteliquent, Mailgun, Mailjet), Bandwidth.com, and Fractel are the biggest offenders. Twilio used to be bad but has become a lot better.
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The only solution is huge fines and jail time. By not coming down hard on these companies, the FCC is basically letting other people be victimized by these scams.

Don’t hold your breath. So says jhoegl:

But here is the problem: The process is slow. Even their announced actions against “Telnyx” will have little effect. What will happen will be that “Telnyx” will shut down/close, and a new company name with the same people will pop up. This effectively resets the FCC’s power against them, and they have to wait until the new company causes problems again.
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Spam call centers … are never really shut down, they just pop up as a new entity. There needs to be better protections against these companies.

But Telnyx denies responsibility. But lglethal thinks that’s unreasonable:

If you’re giving access to your phone network, you should know the customers name, address, probably have access to an ID, etc. … But naturally the Telcos don’t want that, because then they wouldn’t be able to accept so much scam traffic. Dodgy traffic pays—to hell with the real customers.

Meanwhile, King_V cuts to the chase:

Exactly what sort of legitimate telephone company accepts payment in bitcoin?

And Finally:

crab_bloke and chums emit first supercut

Previously in And Finally

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