Robocall Scammers Sued In NJ, 47 Other States

NEW JERSEY — Millions of New Jersey residents on the national “Do Not Call” registry have received scam robocalls in the past five years. Across the country, officials are suing the company and individuals they say are responsible for billions of these calls around the United States.

New Jersey’s attorney general Matthew Platkin joined officials in almost every other state and the District of Columbia in suing Avid Telecom and its leaders.

According to officials, Avid Telecom sent or transmitted more than 7.5 billion illegal robocalls to phone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry between December 2018 and January 2023. More than 237 million of those calls went out to people in New Jersey, Platkin said.

"Everyone has experienced robocalls and nobody likes them,” said Platkin. “Through this complaint, we are cracking down on billions of scam calls and stopping them from continuing to bother our residents.”

Between Dec. 2018 and Jan. 2023, officials say Avid tried to send more than 24.5 billion calls. These calls are pre-recorded, and sent over the Internet in large numbers – officials allege that Avid Telecom used robocalls to facilitate Medicaid and Social Security scams, and made calls pretending to be law enforcement or other officials.

Audio examples of these scam calls are available here and here.

Avid Telecom and its chief officials are accused of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and other federal and state telemarketing and consumer laws.

The lawsuit is filed against owner Michael Lansky and vice president Stacey S. Reeves, who reportedly used Avid to make or help route illegal robocalls around the country. Michael D. Lansky, LLC is named in the lawsuit, and officials said this company was doing business under the name Avid Telecom.

A bipartisan coalition of 51 attorneys general were part of the nationwide Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, which Platkin said is investigating those responsible for routing illegal robocalls to people in the United States.

The only Attorneys General not listed as part of the lawsuit as of Thursday are Alaska and South Dakota.

Hundreds of millions of these calls had “spoofed” or invalid phone numbers, officials said.

Avid Telecom allegedly helped make 84 million calls with caller ID numbers spoofed to look like they were coming from police departments, private companies, or government officials.

Avid also sent or transmitted calls about Social Security Administration scams, Medicare scams, auto warranty scams, Amazon scams, DirecTV scams, credit card interest rate reduction scams, and employment scams, the lawsuit alleges.

Recently, Gov. Phil Murphy signed the “Seinfeld Bill” in an effort to crack down on these telemarketers.

This law states a telemarketer cannot make any unsolicited calls to New Jersey residents between the hours of 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. local time. The caller will be required to disclose the telemarketer's mailing address, the company they are representing, and any website owned/operated by the telemarketer in any subsequent written information with a customer.

Violating the bill would be a disorderly persons offense, in addition to any other penalties already written into law. Related article: 'Seinfeld Bill' Aimed At Telemarketers Is Now An NJ Law

Furthermore, officials allege that an industry group notified Avid Telecom more than 325 times that known and suspected robocalls were going across their networks, but they continued making the calls.