SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – A lawsuit alleging that a single company helped make billions of illegal robocalls was filed Tuesday by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, as part of a coalition of 49 attorneys general, according to the AG’s office.

Officials say these robocalls include Social Security Administration scams, Medicare scams, and employment scams.

“As the People’s Attorney, I’ve been laser-focused on protecting consumers since taking office, and stopping unwanted robocalls is an important bipartisan and nationwide effort,” said Bonta. “In addition to being a daily annoyance, robocalls can and do cause real financial damage. I’m taking Avid Telecom to court for delivering not hundreds, or thousands, or millions of robocalls, but billions of robocalls.”

Officials say that, from December 2018 to January 2023, Avid Telecom allegedly sent or attempted to transmit over 24.5 billion calls to consumers, with more than 90% of those calls lasting under 15 seconds, indicating they were robocalls.

According to Bonta, Avid Telecom allegedly sent or transmitted over 7.5 billion calls to telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, and an estimated 577,879,156 of those calls were made to telephone numbers in California. The Registry would allow consumers to legally opt out costumers to receiving telemarketing calls, but robocalls regularly fail to respect that, officials say.

Bonta alleges that, along with other misconduct, Avid Telecom allegedly violated:

  • The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which would prohibit anyone from making a call using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice to any cellphone.
  • The Truth in Caller ID Act, which would not allow the transmission of fake caller-ID information.
  • California’s Unfair Competition Law which would prohibit unlawful and fraudulent business acts and practices, by transmitting a colossal number of illegal robocalls into California.

Attorney General Rob Bonta is part of the bipartisan coalition of 49 attorneys general who are going to fill the lawsuit agains Avid Telecom.