FCC issues $300 million fine against car warranty robocall operation

Following lengthy detective work and a lawsuit filed by the state of Ohio, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed a $299,997,000 fine against a car warranty robocalling operation of breathtaking scope. It was the largest proposed fine in FCC history. After giving the parties a chance to respond, and hearing nothing, the FCC made it official, imposing the $300 million fine “for auto warranty scam robocalls made by the largest illegal robocall operation the agency has ever investigated.” The government agency said the fine represented the egregiousness of the violations.

And the agency is correct. They’re the calls that annoyed millions and launched a thousand memes.

The primary company name involved in Sumco Panama SA, headed by Roy Melvin Cox, Jr. and Aaron Michael Jones, but there have been many aliases including Davis Telecom, Fugle Telecom, Geist Telecom, Posting Express, Tech Direct, and Virtual Telecom. Their operation has been going since at least 2018, and they’d already been in enough trouble over it that the U.S. government had banned them from the telemarketing industry before this latest action and fine. Cox and Jones worked out of numerous countries, especially Panama and Hungary, so with those numerous aliases, they kept at it, seemingly trying to break records and every law about telemarketing. During one three-month spell in 2021, Sumco Panama made more than 5 billion (!) robocalls to more than 500 million (!) phones in America. Sumco ignored the Do Not Call registry, didn’t identify callers, and didn’t provide a way to opt out of calls, all of which are no-nos. It also spoofed more than 1 million caller ID numbers trying to get people to answer, such as when it used hospital phone numbers to call healthcare workers and other members of the public.   

Last July, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed suit against the operation with documents that illuminated Sumco’s workings. When the FCC then told U.S. telecoms not to carry traffic from Sumco, industry measurement tools showed calls dropped 80%, the FCC saying call volume eventually fell 99%.

Because the FCC can only issue a fine and not enforce it, the action goes to the U.S. Department of Justice for enforcement. The DoJ has a lot on its plate, so it could be some time before the department calls Cox and Jones to collect, if ever. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel used that hitch to ask “that Congress will consider giving the FCC authority to go to court and collect these fines ourselves.” She added that in the meantime, “[We] are coming for [robocallers] and won’t stop until we get this junk off the line.”