DUMBEST SCHEME EVER?: FCC Proposes $4.5MM Penalty on Carrier Telnyx LLC After Bad Guys Pose as the FCC…

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This story is just baffling to me.

Imagine being so dumb, so dumb that you create a robocall scheme where you try to defraud staff at the primary federal regulator that oversees robocalls.

That’s what apparently happened recently and the FCC is coming down hard on the carrier that allowed those calls onto the network.

In In the Matter of Telnyx LLC, File No.: EB-TCD-24-00037170, NAL/Acct. No.: 202432170009, FRN: 0018998724 (Feb 4, 2025 released) the FCC stated the Commission’s “staff and their family members, among others, were targeted with calls containing artificial and prerecorded voice messages that purported to be from a fictitious FCC ‘Fraud Prevention Team’ as part of a government imposter scam aimed at fraudulently extracting payments of large amounts of money by intimidating recipients of the calls.”

What the actual hell.

So they targeted FCC employees–the primary federal regulator of robocalls– with fake fraud prevention robocalls. I mean, the chutzpah.

Per the order, “[t]he FCC has no such “Fraud Prevention Team” and the FCC was not responsible for these calls.” But when they were answered the called party was threatened with prosecution unless they– you guessed it– bought some gift cards:

” One recipient of an Imposter Call reported that they were ultimately connected to someone who “demand[ed] that [they] pay the FCC $1000 in Google gift cards to avoid jail time for [their] crimes against the state.”

Eesh.

Unsurprisingly the Commission was pissed and wanted blood, or the money equivalent of blood.

Being unable to determine who the real bad guys were they took out their fury upon the carrier that apparently permitted the calls to get connected– Telnyx LLC. In the FCC’s words the company failed “to take affirmative, effective measures to prevent malicious actors from using its network to originate illegal voice traffic.”

Now what’s interesting is that Telnyx apparently signed up MarioCop on February 6, 2024 and the calls went out that same day. Telnyx then stopped the traffic immediately. But that did not save it from penalty. The FCC was pissed Telnyx let these guys on the network to begin with.

And when you dig down into this there are red flags everywhere to be seen:

  • The company address provided by MarioCop was the address of a Sheraton hotel in Canada.
  • The email address domain used by MarioCop (@mariocop123.com) is not a real domain associated with any known business;
  • The IP address for the MarioCop Account was from Edinburgh, Scotland and was not affiliated with the physical Toronto address; and, perhaps most tellingly:
  • MarioCop paid Telnyx in Bitcoin and the Bitcoin transaction ID and wallet address the MarioCop Accounts used to pay Telnyx were anonymized and could not be traced.

They paid in Bitcoin????????????????

I mean, maybe if they had paid in Czar Gold ok, but bitcoin?

Just unreal.

Obviously pretty serious lapses in the KYC process here. An the FCC proposes to hit Telnyx with a $4.5MM penalty as a result.

Troutman Amin, LLP has been working with a ton of operators and others on the carrier side to build out policies and procedures–particularly KYC policies– to assure illegal robocalls are avoided and that the carrier has a leg to stand on when the ITG and FCC come knocking. Call us if you have questions.

For now though pretty clear take aways for carriers:

  1. Make sure the business you are allowing to access your network are real businesses. Check addresses and email domains. Do not accept any traffic from gmails, hotmails, or yahoo accounts or domains that aren’t set up.
  2. Make sure the business address provided is a real address and not, say, a Sheraton.
  3. Do not accept Bitcoin as payment. Weird that I even have to say that.

We are likely to have a carrier-relations/deliverability panel at LCOC III. So if that’s of interest to you get some tix. In fact if you are a carrier/operator shoot me an email and I will get you a discount code.

Love you all. Chat soon.

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Published by Eric "Czar" Troutman

The Czar of TCPAWorld Eric Troutman is one of the country’s prominent class action defense lawyers and is nationally recognized in Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) litigation and compliance. He has served as lead defense counsel in more than 70 national TCPA class actions and has litigated nearly a thousand individual TCPA cases in his role as national strategic litigation counsel for major banks and finance companies. He also helps industry participants build TCPA-compliant processes, policies, and systems. Eric has built a national litigation practice based upon deep experience, rigorous analysis and extraordinary responsiveness. Eric and his team feel equally at home litigating multibillion dollar telecommunications class actions in federal court as they do developing and executing national litigation strategies for institutions facing an onslaught of individual TCPA matters. They thrive in each of these roles – delivering consistently excellent results – while never losing sight of the client experience. While many firms now tout TCPA expertise, Eric has been there from the beginning. He built one of the country’s first TCPA-only defense teams and began serving as national TCPA counsel for his clients nearly a decade ago. This perspective allows him to swiftly develop the right litigation strategies for dealing with recurring problems, without wasting time on tactics that are bound to fail. Eric’s rich historical perspective and encyclopedic knowledge of the TCPA landscape also make him an invaluable resource to institutional compliance teams struggling to comply with the shifting regulatory landscape. No task is too small – or too big. Indeed, Eric and his team have helped build TCPA-compliant systems and processes for some of the largest and most complex corporate entities in the country. He commonly works with in-house compliance counsel to build and implement enterprise and business-line specific TCPA solutions, performs TCPA audits and drafts and reviews proposed TCPA policies and procedures. He and his team also have the technical expertise necessary to assist call centers seeking to develop TCPA-resistant call path architecture or to modify existing telephony and software integration to better insulate from potential TCPA exposure. Eric has built a reputation for thought leadership. An avid blogger and speaker, he has been at the forefront of the industry’s effort to push for clarity and a return to sanity for the TCPA for years. He was selected to advocate for the financial services industry on important TCPA issues before the Federal Communications Commission and co-authored the nation’s only comprehensive practice guide on TCPA defense. In his spare time, Eric leads defense teams representing banks and other financial services companies in consumer finance litigation matters. He has experience representing clients in UCC, TILA, RESPA FCRA, CCRA, CLRA, FDCPA, RFDCPA and FCCPA claims, as well as in fraud and bank operations issues.

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