The FCC today proposed a $37.5 million fine against a Tucson company that it said placed more than 2 million "maliciously-spoofed" telemarketing calls to sell home-remodeling services.
The Federal Communications Commission said Affordable Enterprises of Arizona made the telemarketing calls starting in 2016 that apparently manipulated the caller-ID information so that many of the calls appeared to come from consumers not connected to the operation.
Calls also appeared to come from unassigned phone numbers and numbers assigned to pre-paid "burner" phones.
Consumers were unable to identify from the caller ID that the call was from Affordable Enterprises, the FCC said.
One resident received more than five calls per day on her cell phone from consumers complaining about telemarketing calls they thought she had made. The FCC said it determined that Affordable Enterprises "spoofed" telemarketing calls to consumers to make it look like the phone call was coming from this woman's phone.
Affordable Enterprises made more than 2.3 million telemarketing calls during a 14-month span starting in 2016, the FCC said in a news release. The company violated the federal Do Not Call Registry because it knew many of the phone numbers were on that list.
The company also uses the business names of Affordable Kitchen and Affordable Windows.
Today's FCC action gives the company time to respond to the allegations before further action by the federal agency.
