Telecoms Company Avid Sued by 49 States Over ‘Billions of Illegal Robocalls’

A passerby uses a mobile phone while entering a subway station, in Boston, on July 29, 2019. Steven Senne/AP Photo

Attorneys general from 49 U.S. states are suing telecommunications company Avid Telecom, claiming the firm is “initiating and facilitating billions of illegal robocalls to millions of people.”

The lawsuit (pdf) was filed on May 23 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, where Avid Telecom is headquartered.

Defendants in the suit are listed as Avid Telecom, CEO Michael D. Lansky, and Vice President of Operations and Sales Stacey Reeves.

Attorneys general say the company, which advertises itself as a “leading voice solutions provider,” has made roughly 7.5 billion robocalls to numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry in the United States since 2019, in violation of multiple telemarketing laws.

“Every day, millions of American consumers receive a barrage of unwanted robocalls that are harassing, annoying, threatening, and malicious,” the 49 attorneys general wrote in the lawsuit. “These calls are all scams designed to scare and harm consumers. Other robocalls may not be scams but are harassing, abusive, and illegal, nonetheless,” they wrote.

The lawsuit noted that illegal robocalls are the most common contact method used by scammers, with consumers reporting losing more than $692 million to such scams in 2021 alone.

According to the attorneys general, Avid Telecom received more than 320 notifications about illegal robocalls before the lawsuit was filed.

“Despite receiving these 329 notifications, and despite receiving additional letters and correspondence from the ITG [the USTelecom-led Industry Traceback Group] about needing to improve Avid Telecom’s traffic screening procedures, week after week Defendants chose profit over running a business that conforms to state and federal law,” they wrote.

“Defendants could have chosen to implement effective and meaningful procedures to prevent—or even significantly mitigate—the perpetration of illegal behavior onto and across Avid Telecom’s network but chose not to do so,” they added.

Invalid Caller IDs, Scams

The lawsuit goes on to accuse Avid Telecom of knowingly allowing telemarketers or sellers to transmit robocalls across the company’s network and using Avid Telecom’s services to send call traffic that violated federal and state laws.

It further accuses the defendants of having provided “substantial assistance” to robocallers and having “facilitated the transmission and eventual delivery of millions of prerecorded telephone calls to residents in the Plaintiffs’ respective jurisdictions,” during which material aspects of goods or services were misrepresented.