HARRISBURG, PA — A bipartisan coalition of 49 state attorneys general is urging the Federal Communications Commission to tighten rules governing telephone numbers in an effort to curb scam robocalls that increasingly rely on legitimate phone numbers to evade detection.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday joined the request, which calls for stronger oversight of companies that obtain and distribute phone numbers and additional safeguards intended to make it harder for scammers to acquire and rotate legitimate numbers.
The request comes as scam robocalls and text messages remain a widespread consumer protection issue. Americans received nearly 30 billion scam robocalls and text messages last year, according to the attorneys general.
Sunday’s office is serving as a co-lead in the latest action alongside attorneys general from Colorado, New Jersey, North Carolina and Ohio through the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, which has worked with the FCC on robocall enforcement efforts since 2021.
“Robocalls are more than just a nuisance — they are often a means to perpetrate a scam, and when they involve legitimate phone number ‘spoofs,’ they are more effective in achieving their mission of duping Pennsylvanians,” Sunday said. “We are asking the feds to cut off scammers’ access to real phone numbers, which they often buy in droves.”
According to the coalition, scammers have shifted tactics as enforcement actions have made illegal caller ID spoofing more difficult. Instead of impersonating existing phone numbers, many now purchase legitimate numbers in large quantities and rapidly cycle through them, making it harder for spam filters and law enforcement to identify fraudulent calls.
The attorneys general cited one North Carolina investigation in which scammers placed more than 17.3 million calls in a single day through one phone company while rarely using the same telephone number more than twice.
The coalition is asking the FCC to require stronger certification standards for companies authorized to buy and resell North American phone numbers, mandate regular reporting that would help law enforcement trace illegal robocalls, require applicants to certify they will not use numbers for unlawful robocalls, prohibit sales to entities without legitimate calling or texting services, ban the practice of rapidly cycling through large numbers of telephone numbers, and restrict the availability of trial phone numbers that can be exploited by scammers.
The request follows the multistate “Operation Robocall Roundup,” through which attorneys general recently sent warning letters to major telecommunications providers urging them to prevent illegal robocalls from reaching consumers.
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