FTC Announces Crackdown on Two Massive Illegal Robocall Operations

The Federal Trade Commission announced a crackdown on two massive robocall telemarketing operations, both of which have been blasting robocalls to consumers on the National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry since at least 2012. Many of the defendants in the two cases, FTC v. Justin Ramsey, et. al. and FTC v. Aaron Michael Jones, et. al., have agreed to court orders that permanently ban them from making robocalls, making any calls to numbers listed on the Do Not Call Registry, violating the TSR, and/or assisting others in doing so. The settling defendants also will pay the Commission a total of more than $500,000.

The two ringleaders of the operations—Justin Ramsey and Aaron Michael (“Mike”) Jones—have previously been sued by state attorneys general for telemarketing violations and the FTC’s litigation against them continues. According to the FTC’s complaint in the Ramsey action, the defendants illegally blasted millions of robocalls in 2012 and 2013 to consumers on the DNC Registry selling home security systems or generating leads for home security installation companies. In just one week in July 2012, the defendants allegedly made more than 1.3 million illegal calls to consumers nationwide, 80 percent of which were to numbers listed on the DNC Registry.