FCC fines robocaller $120 million for making nearly 100 million calls

Mike Snider | USA TODAY

The Federal Communications Commission has approved its largest fine ever — $120 million — against a Miami man who was found to have placed 96.8 million fraudulent robocalls for vacation deals.

The FCC initially levied the fine against Adrian Abramovich, doing business as Marketing Strategy Leaders, in June 2017 alleging his business used "neighborhood spoofing" technology to include local area codes and the first three numbers of the recipient's own phone number to encourage people to answer robocalls.

The calls professed to offer vacation deals from major travel companies such as Expedia, Hilton, Marriott and TripAdvisor. But instead, those who answered where transferred to foreign call centers and sold travel packages at unrelated destinations, including timeshares in Mexico.

TripAdvisor, which doesn't do telemarketing, helped the FCC in the investigation as it had many complaints about the robocalls.

During a Senate Commerce hearing last month, Abramovich denied being "the kingpin of robocalling that is alleged."

Abramovich did not deny making the calls but has said he did not intend to mislead or defraud consumers.

”But if so, why did he include fraudulent caller ID information with each and every one of his 96 million robocalls?" FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Thursday. "And why did the recorded messages indicate that the calls came from well-known travel or hospitality companies ... even though they were attempting to sell vacation packages at destinations unrelated to those named companies?"

Pai said Abramovich's robocall operation not only defrauded customers by selling misrepresented travel packages, but also caused harm to Spōk, a Virginia-based medical paging service whose system was disrupted by the robocalls.

"Our decision sends a loud and clear message, this FCC is an active cop on the beat and will throw the book at anyone who violates our spoofing and robocall rules and harms consumers," he said.

Around 90% of Abramovich's robocalls were made to wireless phones, 10% to landlines.

It remains to be seen if the fine will help stem the increasing tide of robocalls; 3.4 billion were made nationwide in April, up 30% over last year.

The agency needs to update rules and adopt better technology to combat the robocall scourge, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said.

"We are drowning in them," she said.

More: 98 million robocalls hit Americans every day. The FCC's fines aren't stopping them.

More: Don't pick up: how to stop these annoying robocalls for good

Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.