Attorney General Jeff Jackson Leads Bipartisan Coalition Pushing Federal Government to Further Crackdown on Illegal Robocalls

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, July 8, 2026
Contact: comms@ncdoj.gov
919-538-2809

RALEIGH— When a robocall scammer wants to call you, he doesn’t need to do it from a fake number. The first thing he does is buy a long list of real phone numbers, then he cycles through them so fast that spam filters can’t keep up. By the time one number gets flagged, he’s moved on to the next.

That’s the loophole behind billions of scam calls a year, and today Attorney General Jeff Jackson led a bipartisan group of 48 other attorneys general demanding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) close it by cutting scammers off from their supply of phone numbers.

“These scammers are buying real phone numbers to try to trick you into thinking the calls are real,” said Attorney General Jeff Jackson. “They shouldn’t be able to do that. We’re asking the FCC to cut scammers off at the source and make sure that the people behind these illegal robocalls can’t get real phone numbers in the first place.”

Last year, Americans received approximately 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts and lost nearly $2 billion to these scams. Scammers used to primarily illegally “spoof” other people’s phone numbers to make it look like a call was coming from a legitimate company or government agency. But scammers can’t easily do this anymore after the federal government and state attorneys general took action to cut down on illegal spoofing. Now, scammers often purchase legitimate phone numbers and use them to make illegal robocalls.

While most legitimate businesses use the same phone number for many years, scammers cycle through millions of brand new phone numbers, which helps them avoid detection by spam filters. In one North Carolina case, scammers made more than 17.3 million calls on a single day through one phone company – but they generally didn’t use the same number more than twice to make those calls, which is a common tactic among scammers.

In addition to the steps the FCC is already taking, the bipartisan attorneys general are asking the federal government to do more, including:

• Require every company that is authorized to purchase and then resell phone numbers in North America to meet stronger certification rules and share how and to whom they are assigning numbers.

• Require these companies to submit regular reports about the sale and use of numbers, so law enforcement can trace illegal robocalls back to the source. These reports will also help law enforcement hold all the companies in the call path accountable for selling or transmitting numbers used to conduct illegal robocalls.

• Require people and entities that are applying to access phone numbers to confirm that they won’t use them to make illegal robocalls.

• Block the sale of phone numbers to entities that aren’t tied to a calling or texting service. Robocallers often buy these numbers without linking them to a legitimate phone service, since they don’t plan on using the numbers for legitimate calling and texting purposes.

• Prohibit number cycling, which is when an entity buys lots of numbers and then uses them on a rotating, sometimes single-use, basis to avoid being detected by tools that flag numbers used to make illegal robocalls.

• Restrict the offering of trial numbers to discourage scammers from taking advantage of them to harm consumers.

Attorney General Jackson has long been fighting to protect North Carolinians from illegal robocalls. The Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force launched Operation Robocall Roundup in August 2025. As part of the operation, Attorney General Jackson sent a warning letter to 37 voice providers, demanding that they act to stop illegal robocalls being routed through their networks. In December, he announced Phase 2 of the operation, which expanded the crackdown to four of the largest voice providers in the U.S. In May 2025, he won a court order permanently barring John Spiller, a scammer who owned and operated several voice service providers that initiated and facilitated tens of millions of illegal robocalls to North Carolinians, from operating in the telecommunications industry.

Attorney General Jackson is joined in signing the letter by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

A copy of the letter is available here.

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