MADISON, Wis. -- Wisconsin has joined in a suit brought by attorneys general from across the nation against a telecom company accused of sending illegal robocalls.
Attorney General Josh Kaul announced the suit against Avid Telecom, its owner Michael Lansky and its vice president Stacey S. Reeves on Tuesday, accusing the company of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and various other state and federal telemarketing and consumer laws.
Avid Telecom is accused of sending or transmitting over 7.5 billion calls, including about 157 million in Wisconsin, to phone numbers that were listed on the National Do Not Call Registry from December 2018 to January 2023.
"In many cases, those calls were part of scams," Kaul said. "People shouldn’t have to put up with those nuisance calls, and we’re taking action to fight them."
Kaul's suit alleges that Avid Telecom sold data, phone numbers, dialing software and expertise to help customers make mass robocalls. Hundreds of millions of those calls were allegedly using spoofed or invalid caller ID numbers, including 8.4 million calls that impersonated government and law enforcement agencies and private companies.
The suit alleges Avid sent or transmitted scam calls about Social Security, Medicare, Amazon, DirecTV and auto warranties. The suit came about as part of a nationwide investigation by the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force.
Kaul is joined in the suit by attorneys general from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
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