I am retired and thus near my home and cell phones most of the day.  One of my pet peeves is the large number of scam phone calls we receive every day, especially from overseas locations.  Often the calling number on our caller ID indicates that the callers are close by, possibly neighbors, so they are difficult to ignore. The FCC estimates that Americans receive 4 billion scam calls a month.  Since there are about 123 million households in the US, that would average only 32 scam calls a month per household. We get many more than that, as many as 5 or 6 or even more a day.

If you are not careful they can be more than just annoying, According to TrueCaller Insights in 2020 an estimated 42 million Americans lost $19.7 Billion to call scammers.  Those are 5% higher than the 2019 figures.

The calls vary.  Of course there are still those offering to reduce your credit card rates or even to eliminate your credit card debt completely.  I even had a couple from “Discover Card” offering a special deal and  I don’t even have a Discover card.  There are also calls from the “IRS” or “Social Security” telling you something terrible will happen if you don’t dial 1.  Some of the more inventive ones are from companies such as “Direct TV” or “Verizon” offering “deals that are so good you can’t past them up”.  Oh yeah, then there are the ones from Microsoft advising me that my PC has been hacked and my credit information is being stolen; the last informed me that my IP address had been compromised and if I don’t call a toll free number within 48 hours it will be shut down permanently. And did I mention that “your car warranty is about to expire?”

Most of these are robo calls and they all have the objective of fraudulently capturing your critical financial information such as your credit card number or social security number. If you do dial 1 you will almost always be connected to people with a foreign accent.  The vast majority are coming form outside of the United States, but you wouldn’t know that by checking your caller ID.  They use simple number spoofing technology to change their actual calling telephone number to a number local to your area or at least from somewhere else in our country.   

Some of the most annoying scam calls are what the FCC calls the “one ring scam”, except it is now the two ring scam, at least at my house.  That is when your phone rings only one or two times.  If you pick up right away before the ringing stops, no one is there.  If you check your recent call list you will find a local number.  What the scammer hopes to do is get a curious American to call the number back.  If he does he is connected through an international number and the scammer tries to keep him on the line as long as possible.  Meanwhile the expensive international call minutes pile up as do additional “service charges” which go to the scamming organization.  The victims are none the wiser until they get their phone bills and try to figure out why it is unusually high that month.   

Now if you go to the FCC website you will read that preventing scam calls is the agency’s “top priority”. However, most of the website is dedicated to informing the public how not to be a victim.  Oh, you can fill out a complaint, but if you do it goes into a black hole from which you never get feedback.  The truth of the matter is that since scammers always send an inaccurate number to your caller ID, the FCC has no way to investigate and determine the identity of the callers in order to act on most complaints.  Besides, while I do file an occasional complaint for what seems to me to be an unusually dangerous situation for the general public, I don’t have the time to file complaints for all of the many scam calls I receive on my home and cell phone every day.  

The emphasis of the FCC should be on preventing the scam calls from being routed through our nation’s telephone systems in the first place.  Only 6.6% of international calls are legitimate; scammers are make up the vast majority of the rest. Since many of the scam calls originate in other countries,  you and I should have the opportunity to block international calls except perhaps those placed from a few telephone numbers.  There is technology to do just that, but the FCC does not mandate that telephone and cell companies provide that service, and provide it for free.  Many don’t offer this service at all. 

There is also technology that would allow telephone and cell companies to block robocalls, or at least warn the receiving party via caller ID that an incoming call is of that nature.  The FCC does not mandate telephone and cell companies to provide this service.  This should also be a mandated free service.  My cell company sends out a warning, “Possible Telemarketer” or “Possible Scam” so I can choose not to answer a call.  However, the company that provides my landline offers no such service. 

In addition, the FCC should aggressively do what is necessary to put the scammers out of business and in jail.  With the cooperation of the local telephone company, it is possible to trace even international calls to their source in order to identify the entity paying for the service and the call’s originating address.  I understand that the FCC has a center with many lines with various area code designations to receive these spam calls just like you and I do, and they probably have the ability to trace them.  (If they don’t have such a center, they should have one with that capability.)

The FCC has done a good job of putting US based scamming operations, most of them operating out of Florida and California, out of business and in jail. They have been far less successful in identifying, expediting, and conflicting scammers operating in other countries.  Our government should put the countries from which most scam calls originate (Costa Rica, Guatemala, India, Mexico, the Philippines, and some Latin American countries) on notice and pressure them to clean up their act. 

The FCC should have field agents on their payroll to travel to these countries to investigate once traces of scam calls have been verified to work with local authorities to apprehend the culprits and have them expedited to the US for trial in an expeditious manner.  If the country in question doesn’t want to play ball, we should put extreme pressure on their governments to comply.  If that doesn’t work I have no problem sending in a Seal team to snatch the bad guys and bring them here to face justice. 

Criminal organizations operate on a risk vs. reward system.  Right now there is virtually no risk for setting up a scamming organization in another country and the potential reward is a chunk of $19.7 million per year enterprise. That equation has to change.  Taking the necessary measures to avoid those losses suffered every year by American citizens would cost only a small fraction of that total. If the FCC doesn’t get more aggressive in solving this problem on its own, Congress needs to get involved.

Cajun (Rick Guilbeau)     3/8/2021