“I AM not the kingpin of robocalling that is alleged.” So Adrian Abramovich, a telemarketer from Florida, assured American senators in April. Accused of making nearly 100m illegal “robocalls” in 2016 as part of a campaign to sell discounted holidays, Mr Abramovich has denied criminal wrongdoing. Nonetheless, on May 10th the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), America’s telecoms regulator, fined him $120m, the largest penalty in the agency’s history.

The skirmish over Mr Abramovich is part of America’s long, mostly unsuccessful war against robocalls, the pre-recorded phone messages peddling debt-reduction and timeshares that have irritated consumers for over a decade. According to YouMail, a call-blocking service, 3.4bn robocalls were blasted out in April, equivalent to nearly 1,300 every second. The Federal Trade Commission receives 500,000 complaints about such calls every month (see chart). Ajit Pai, the FCC chairman, says Americans are “mad as hell”. Robocalls are consistently the agency’s top consumer complaint. Can anything be done?

Most commercial robocalls have been illegal since 1991, when Congress passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. In 2012 the FCC banned telemarketers from making robocalls to consumers without previous written consent, and eliminated a loophole allowing companies to robocall consumers with whom they have an “established business relationship”. That caused a temporary lull in complaints. Despite successful cases against legitimate firms like Bank of America and Sallie Mae, though, federal regulators have struggled to stop shady outfits. Auto-diallers allow fraudsters to blast out millions of calls at little cost; “spoofing” software disguises their identities. After robocaller phone numbers are identified and blacklisted, new ones pop up in their place. Many robocalling operations are based overseas and beyond the authorities’ reach.