By Tom Latek
Kentucky Today
Attorney General Russell Coleman announced that Kentucky has joined a 48-state coalition to further crackdown on scam calls and texts.
A bipartisan coalition of AGs is calling on the Federal Communications Commission to strengthen rules that would cut off scammers’ access to legitimate telephone numbers. Without that access, scammers can’t use real numbers to deceive and scam people.
Fraudsters often purchase legitimate phone numbers and use them to make robocalls and send texts. In the past, scammers would illegally “spoof” phone numbers to make calls appear legitimate. After the federal government and state attorneys general took action in 2021, scammers are not as easily able to spoof numbers. However, the problem persists.
According to Robocall Index, 323.4 million robocalls were placed to Kentucky during the first six months of this year.
“These con artists continue to target Kentuckians in hopes of scamming them out of our hard-earned money,” Coleman said. “Our office will continue to collaborate with partners who are dedicated to protecting our people.”
The AGs are asking the federal government to do more, including requiring companies that purchase and resell phone numbers in North America to meet stronger certification rules, block the sale of phone numbers to entities that aren’t tied to a calling or texting service and restrict the offering of trial numbers to discourage scammers from taking advantage of them.
Coleman joined the Colorado, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania led letter, along with the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.