Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti joined a bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general in suing Avid Telecom, a company accused of initiating and facilitating millions of Americans with billions of illegal robocalls.
The lawsuit claims that Avid Telecom, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider based in Arizona; Michael Lansky, the company’s owner; and its vice president, Stacy Reeves, violated two federal laws, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the Telemarketing Sales Rule.
The company’s robocall services included tools for rapidly placing high volumes of calls, access to phone numbers and dialing software, and assisting in routing illegal robocalls across the country, according to the lawsuit.
Over 24.5 billion calls were sent or attempted by Avid Telecom between December 2018 and January 2023, the lawsuit notes, adding that in more than 90 percent of the calls, the duration was less than 15 seconds, suggesting they were robocalls.
In addition, the company assisted in making hundreds of millions of calls using spoofed and invalid caller IDs, including more than 8.4 million calls from government agencies and law enforcement agencies.
The calls sent or transmitted by the company allegedly ranged from Social Security Administration scams, Medicare scams, auto warranty scams, Amazon scams, DirecTV scams, credit card interest rate reduction scams, and employment scams.
“Everybody hates robocalls, especially when they are used to take advantage of our most vulnerable citizens,” Skrmetti said in a statement. “I appreciate the efforts of this bipartisan group to stop this relentless annoyance and protect Tennesseans from exploitative interruptions.”
The lawsuit is the first legal action taken by the bipartisan AntiRobocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, which was formed last year.
“We wouldn’t be bombarded with robocalls if it wasn’t benefitting certain companies in the telecommunications industry,” former Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III stated at the time of the task force formation. “These calls are not only a nuisance but a scam risk to many in Tennessee and nationwide.”
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
