Lawsuit: Company Made 237 Million Illegal Robocalls to NJ Phone Numbers

Officials in New Jersey have joined a multistate lawsuit against the operators of a telemarketing company for allegedly initiating and facilitating billions of illegal robocalls to millions of people.

Get our free mobile app

Attorney General Matthew Platkin says between December 2018 and January 2023, Avid Telecom "sent or transmitted more than 7.5 billion calls to telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry...more than 237 million of those calls were to numbers in New Jersey."

Michael Lansky, the owner of Avid Telecom and its vice president, Stacey S. Reeves, were named in the suit.

Platkin said in a statement,

Everyone has experienced robocalls and nobody likes them. Through this complaint, we are cracking down on billions of scam calls and stopping them from continuing to bother our residents.

According to officials,

• Avid Telecom is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service provider that sells data, phone numbers, dialing software, and/or expertise to help its customers make mass robocalls.

• It also serves as an intermediate provider and allegedly facilitated or helped route illegal robocalls across the country.

• Between December 2018 and January 2023, Avid sent or attempted to transmit more than 24.5 billion calls. More than 90 percent of those calls lasted less than just 15 seconds, which indicates they were likely robocalls.

• Further, Avid helped make hundreds of millions of calls using spoofed or invalid caller ID numbers, including more than 8.4 million calls that appeared to be coming from government and law enforcement agencies, as well as private companies.

Avid Telecom allegedly sent or transmitted scam calls about the Social Security Administration, Medicare, auto warranties, Amazon, DirecTV, credit card interest rate reduction, and more.

New Jersey is joined in filing today's complaint by the Attorneys General of 48 other states and the District of Columbia.