On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the US Department of Justice (DOJ), as well as four US states, won a $280 million civil penalty in a case involving Dish Network. The federal government alleged that the satellite TV provider had engaged in telemarketing improprieties that occurred starting in 2003. A US District judge in Illinois also ordered Dish to demonstrate that it has reformed its practices and to hire a third-party compliance expert to make sure that the company doesn’t call residents on Do Not Call lists in the future.

The FTC said in a press release that the civil penalty would be split up so that $168 million goes to the federal government and the rest would be divided among the four states—California, Illinois, North Carolina, and Ohio. Although the $168 million award is the largest civil penalty levied on a company for violating the FTC Act, the DOJ originally asked for over $900 million. Including the state’s claims, the potential fine had a ceiling of $24 billion.

In a statement to Ars, Dish Network said it would appeal yesterday’s ruling because it had not directly made the telemarketing calls in question:

Dish respectfully disagrees with the decision by the Court and will appeal the ruling. The amounts awarded in this case radically and unjustly exceed, by orders of magnitude, those found in the settlements in similar actions, notably against DirecTV, Comcast, and Caribbean Cruise Lines. Dish is being held responsible for telemarketing activities conducted by independent third parties, including in circumstances where such third parties intentionally hid their telemarketing efforts from Dish. Dish has long taken its compliance with telemarketing laws seriously, has and will continue to maintain rigorous telemarketing compliance policies and procedures, and has topped multiple independent customer-service surveys along the way.

The FTC contends that Dish “initiated, or caused a telemarketer to initiate, outbound telephone calls to phone numbers on the Do Not Call Registry” and violated telemarketing rules forbidding abandoned calls. The commission added that Dish “assisted and facilitated telemarketers when it knew, or consciously avoided knowing, that the telemarketer was engaged in violations of the law.”

Dish settled a similar matter with 46 other states in 2009, paying $5.99 million total for violations of the Do Not Call Registry.