Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley says that most unsolicited calls that Mississippians receive on their cell phones are likely fraudulent and that fines administered by the commission aren’t much of a deterrent.
Presley says there are some state laws regarding these types of calls that could be “tightened up.” He also said he supports a ban on all robocalls, which are entirely automated.
“I think there are a couple of things that can be done,” Presley said. “Number one, we don’t have the ability go after the app developers who are developing apps that allow you to spoof your phone number. Number two, we should find a way in the state government to ensure that the databases that are maintained by state government agencies in Mississippi are protected from telemarketing companies who could manipulating those to use data to turn around and call people.
"Thirdly, look at ways in which to tighten up the law related to the fraud aspect of it.”
The four-term Democratic commissioner who spoke at the Stennis Capitol Press Club Forum Monday said 90 percent of these calls are fraud. Federal law makes it illegal to use auto dialing software to call cell phones.
“These are crooks with a capital C and the only reason they’re calling, they’re hoping they will catch you and get you to buy into something,” Presley said. “We can issue fines all day long and they do serve a legitimate purpose because with those fines, you can get a judgement through the court system.
Presley mentioned Indiana as an example of a state that banned robocalls. These automated calls are required in the Hoosier State to have a live operator who made the call and asked the recipient for permission to play the automated message. These include business and political robocalls.
According to a Harris poll used in an annual report by spam/scam call blocking app developer Truecall, 59.49 million Americans (23 percent) report having lost money as a result of a phone scam, up from 56 million in 2020. These scam calls have cost Americans $29.8 billion.
The Sweden-based developer said this is the highest number recorded since the company started researching scam and spam calls seven years ago.
A 2020 study by North Carolina State University found that while the number of robocalls isn’t increasing, the stories of individuals receiving hundreds of robocalls are likely true.
The authors of the study used a communications company, Bandwidth Inc., to set up 66,606 phone lines that could be monitored for robocalls. The researchers monitored the lines from early 2019 into early 2020. Those lines received 1.48 million unsolicited calls, with 62 percent of them having no audio at all.
