New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been investigating a plot to flood the Federal Communications Commission with fake public comments on net neutrality and claims the agency has refused to respond to requests for information, he said Wednesday.

In an open letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, Schneiderman said his office has spent the last six months trying to figure out who is behind a scheme to “corrupt the FCC’s notice and comment process” by using New Yorkers’ and other Americans’ identities.

Schneiderman said the FCC has refused requests for evidence in its possession that would help move the investigation forward.

“The process the FCC has employed to consider potentially sweeping alterations to current net neutrality rules has been corrupted by the fraudulent use of Americans’ identifies — and the FCC has been unwilling to assist my office in our efforts to investigate this unlawful activity,” Schneiderman said.

A spokesperson for the FCC slammed Schneiderman's probe as an exercise in self-promotion.

“This so-called investigation is nothing more than a transparent attempt by a partisan supporter of the Obama Administration’s heavy-handed Internet regulations to gain publicity for himself," the spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.

Over the last 6 mos, my office has investigated a massive scheme to corrupt the @FCC's comment process on #NetNeutrality by impersonating 100,000s of real Americans.



The FCC has been unwilling to provide information that is critical to the investigation: https://t.co/xxFjSg6Pxf — Eric Schneiderman (@AGSchneiderman) November 22, 2017



The FCC announced in April it would issue a notice of proposed rulemaking regarding the rollback of net neutrality rules, which requires the agency to accept public comments on the proposed rules.

One month later, researchers and reporters found that “enormous numbers” of fake comments regarding net neutrality were being submitted to the FCC. Many of the comments used fake names and addresses, but others fraudulently used the real names and addresses of Americans, which Schneiderman said is "akin to identity theft."

"The perpetrator or perpetrators attacked what is supposed to be an open public process by attempting to drown out and negate the views of the real people, businesses, and others who honestly commented on this important issue," he said.

According to the FCC, there was suspicious activity surrounding comments supporting the net neutrality rules, and more than 7.5 million comments the agency received consisted of the same form letter. The comments came from roughly 45,000 unique email addresses that were created by a website that generates fake ones, the FCC said.

Additionally, at least 400,000 comments in support of the net neutrality rules originated from an address in Russia, the FCC said.

Schneiderman's office analyzed the fake comments and discovered “tens of thousands” of New Yorkers’ identifies may have been misused. He also found tens of thousands of residents in California, Georgia, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas may have also had their identifies used in the same way.

Because misusing one’s identity is a violation of New York law, Schneiderman’s office launched an investigation and asked the FCC in June for records related to the public comment system. Schneiderman made similar requests nine times in five months, he said.

The New York attorney general said he has not received a “substantive response” to the requests.

“Misuse of identity online by the hundreds of thousands should concern everyone—for and against net neutrality, New Yorker or Texas, Democrat or Republican,” Schneiderman said.

He asked the FCC to “reconsider its refusal to assist” his office’s investigation to find the perpetrator behind the scheme.

“In an era where foreign governments have indisputably tried to use the Internet and social media to influence our elections, federal and state governments should be working together to ensure that malevolent actors cannot subvert our administrative agencies’ decision-making processes,” Schneiderman said.

The New York attorney general’s claims come one day after Pai announced his plan to repeal net neutrality rules, which are designed to ensure that Internet service providers treat all web content equally by preventing providers from blocking, slowing or interfering with traffic from specific websites and services.

The agency will vote Dec. 14 to repeal the Obama-era rules.