Help AG Bob Ferguson track down sources of illegal robocalls and telemarketing scams

The state Attor­ney General’s office wants cit­i­zen help in track­ing down inces­sant and often ille­gal robo­calls as well as tele­phone scams, and has set up two new web sites to report auto­mat­ed, record­ed mes­sages that will not end.

“Robo­calls are more than just annoy­ing – they can also be ille­gal,” said Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son. “Many of our cas­es are based on tips we receive from Wash­ing­to­ni­ans. If robo­calls are harass­ing you, please file a com­plaint with my office.”

Fer­gu­son has gone to court and joined in state AG law­suits, the lat­est last Octo­ber against a Cor­val­lis-based out­fit called Glob­al Grid Tele­com, which placed 54,000 alleged­ly decep­tive record­ed messages.

Curi­ous­ly, the mes­sages hawked a robo­call block­ing service.

A year ago, two firms that made more than 1.7 mil­lion robo­calls into Wash­ing­ton agreed to pay $495,000 to legit­i­mate char­i­ties as a result of a law­suit by Fer­gu­son and 39 oth­er attor­neys gen­er­al, and the Fed­er­al Trade Commission.

The biggest win, an August, 2020, order by a King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court judge that Van­cou­ver, Wash­ing­ton-based air duct clean­ing com­pa­nies and own­ers pay $10 mil­lion in civ­il penal­ties US Air Ducts & Sky Builders and DLM Ser­vices, Inc. made over 13 mil­lion robo­calls with­in Wash­ing­ton from 2017 to 2019. More than five hun­dred in the state were called more than a hun­dred times.

The calls can be more than annoying.

The 1996 Bob Dole pres­i­den­tial cam­paign flood­ed the phone lines with a mes­sage from would-be first lady Eliz­a­beth Dole. A cus­tomer in Sno­homish Coun­ty, seek­ing to report an emer­gency, was unable to get the polit­i­cal pitch off his line.

The AG’s com­plaint form asks spe­cif­ic ques­tions which seek to give foot­prints to the ori­gin of the call, even if the caller iden­ti­ty is faked.

Callers are asked to jot down the num­ber, iden­ti­fy the tele­phone provider, and note the time and date of the phonecall.

The web­site to report pos­si­bly ille­gal robo­calls be reached is here.

A sec­ond, infor­ma­tion­al web­site about robo­calls and tele­mar­ket­ing scams is here.

Com­plaints about robo­calls can also be reg­is­tered with the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion, which in Feb­ru­ary received no few­er than 6,075 com­plaints from peo­ple in Wash­ing­ton about unwant­ed tele­phone solicitations.

If you are at home much of the time – this writer is recov­er­ing from injuries – the vol­ume of robo­calls and tele­mar­ket­ing frauds is eye-opening.

The last two years have wit­nessed a stern record­ed warn­ing that one’s Seat­tle City Light (or Puget Sound Ener­gy) bill is over­due and that ser­vice will be quick­ly cut off unless a lot of mon­ey is sent. A big vol­ume of calls, placed by a per­son, sup­pos­ed­ly came from the U.S. Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice warn­ing of tax delin­quen­cy. (The IRS empha­sizes that it nev­er calls peo­ple to accost them.)

A much-used scam, designed to elic­it cred­it card num­bers, is to warn that somebody’s Ama­zon or Pay­Pal account has been com­pro­mised. The caller probes for per­son­al infor­ma­tion sup­pos­ed­ly to safe­guard the customer’s interests.

The Attor­ney General’s office offers sev­er­al tips on deal­ing with such calls.

The first and fore­most is to offer no per­son­al infor­ma­tion, no Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers or cred­it card infor­ma­tion or pass­words of any kind.

Offers of free or low cost ser­vice should arouse sus­pi­cion, every bit as much as emails offer­ing you the for­tune of a Niger­ian oil baron or the late dic­ta­tor of Zaire. Of course, tele­phone threats to cut off util­i­ty ser­vice sig­nal a fraud.

If your TV set or caller ID warns of a bogus call, do not answer. Or hang up imme­di­ate­ly. I have found one per­sis­tent nui­sance to be police or law enforce­ment char­i­ties, and a par­tic­u­lar­ly per­sis­tent caller named “Lee.”

Even if calls are being placed by peo­ple reg­is­tered to do com­mer­cial fundrais­ing for legit­i­mate enti­ties, your mon­ey may go to an out­fit noto­ri­ous for dis­pens­ing only a small por­tion of rev­enue to the good caus­es they sup­pos­ed­ly serve.

One more tip: Don’t call back or the scam­mer will flag your phone num­ber for fur­ther calls. And remem­ber to put your name on the fed­er­al Do Not Call list. It will shield you from some telemarketers.

Note that polit­i­cal calls are exempt from tele­mar­ket­ing restric­tions, along with solic­i­ta­tions from char­i­ties. If you are sus­pi­cious about a char­i­ty – for instance, if the name “Trump” is attached – con­tact the Sec­re­tary of State’s Char­i­ties division.