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Colorado Attorney General joins lawsuit over robocalls

Company allegedly responsible for over 148 million robocalls to Colorado numbers from December 2018 to January 2023
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Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser joined 50 other attorneys general in suing a company that has allegedly facilitated billions of illegal robocalls.

The group has sued Michael D. Lansky, LLC, which does business under the name Avid telecom, its owner Michael Lansky and its vice president Stacey S. Reeves. In a release, Weiser’s office said Avid Telecom sent or transmitted more than 7.5 billion calls to telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, and violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule and other federal and state consumer laws.

Nearly 148 million of those calls were to numbers in Colorado between December 2018 and January 2023, the release said.

“Our work to combat the scourge of robocalls continues with today’s action against Avid Telecom for bombarding Americans with billions of illegal robocalls,” Weiser said. “Bad actors use robocalls to scam consumers out of their money or private data. I won’t hesitate to act against anyone that violates state and federal laws.”

Avid Telecom is a Voice over Internet Protocol service provider that sells data, phone numbers, dialing software and/or expertise to help its customers make mass robocalls. It also serves as an intermediate provider and allegedly facilitated or helped route illegal robocalls across the country, the release said.

Between December 2018 and January 2023, Avid sent or attempted to transmit more than 24.5 billion calls, of which at least 90% lasted less than 15 seconds, indicating they were likely robocalls.

The release said that Avid helped make hundreds of millions of calls that used spoofed or invalid caller ID numbers, including more than 8.4 million calls that appeared to be coming from government and law enforcement agencies, as well as private companies.

Avid allegedly sent scam calls about Social Security, Medicare, auto warranties, Amazon, DirecTV, credit card interest rate reductions and job opportunities.

The USTelecom-led Industry Traceback Group, which notifies providers about known and suspected illegal robocalls sent across their networks, sent at least 329 notifications to Avid Telecom that it was transmitting these calls, but the company continued to do so.

The legal action arises from the nationwide Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force composed of 51 attorneys general. The task force is investigating and taking legal action against those responsible for routing significant volumes of illegal robocall traffic into and across the U.S.

Coloradans can report fraudulent or unwanted telephone calls to stopfraudcolorado.gov.