About damn time!!!

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The Trump administration filed civil actions for temporary restraining orders Wednesday in two landmark cases against five companies and three individuals allegedly responsible for carrying hundreds of millions of fraudulent robocalls to American consumers, the Department of Justice announced. The Department of Justice alleges that the companies were warned numerous times that they were carrying fraudulent robocalls — including government- and business-imposter calls — and yet continued to carry those calls and facilitate foreign-based fraud schemes targeting Americans. The calls, most of which originated in India, led to massive financial losses to elderly and vulnerable victims across the nation.

“Robocalls are an annoyance to many Americans, and those that are fraudulent and predatory are a serious problem, often causing devastating financial harm to the elderly and vulnerable members of our society,” said Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt for the Department of Justice’s Civil Division. “The Department of Justice will pursue to the fullest extent of the law individuals in the United States who knowingly facilitate imposter fraud calls, using both criminal and civil tools where appropriate. And we look forward to working closely with law enforcement colleagues in India and elsewhere around the world to identify those behind these calls so that we can bring them to justice.”

The two cases announced today contain similar allegations. The defendants in one case are Ecommerce National LLC d/b/a TollFreeDeals.com; SIP Retail d/b/a sipretail.com; and their owner/operators, Nicholas Palumbo, 38, and Natasha Palumbo, 33, of Scottsdale, Arizona. The defendants in the other case include Global Voicecom Inc., Global Telecommunication Services Inc., KAT Telecom Inc., aka IP Dish, and their owner/operator, Jon Kahen, 45, of Great Neck, New York. In each case, the Department of Justice sought an order immediately halting the defendants’ transmission of unlawful robocall traffic. A federal court has entered a temporary restraining order against the Global Voicecom defendants.

Americans have experienced a deluge of robocalls over the past several years. Many of the robocalls originate abroad. Recently, foreign fraudsters have used robocalls to impersonate government investigators and to provide Americans with alarming messages, such as: the recipient’s social security number or other personal information has been compromised or otherwise connected to criminal activity; the recipient faces imminent arrest; their assets are being frozen; their bank and credit accounts have suspect activity; their benefits are being stopped; they face imminent deportation; or combinations of these threats. Each of these claims is a lie, designed to scare the call recipient into paying large sums of money. Social Security imposters, IRS imposters, and tech-support schemes (in which callers impersonate legitimate technology companies) have proliferated in part because of the ease with which robocalls can reach millions of potential victims every hour.