CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey's office has joined almost every other state AG in a lawsuit against a company accused of making millions of robocalls.
The lawsuit was filed May 23 in federal court in Arizona. Morrisey joined the AGs of 47 other states as well as the District of Columbia's AG in suing Michael D. Lansky LLC, which does business under the name Avid Telecom, its owner Michael Lansky and its vice president Stacey S. Reeves.
The complaint accuses the defendants of allegedly initiating and facilitating billions of illegal robocalls to millions of people and violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and other federal and state telemarketing and consumer laws.
Morrisey
Morrisey says Avid Telecom allegedly sent or transmitted more than 7.5 billion calls to telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry.
“This obviously impacts not just West Virginia but the entire nation," Morrisey said. "That is why this bipartisan effort is so important. West Virginia remains committed to making progress in combating unlawful robocalls and we will continue to cooperate with other states and national agencies to stop these illegal and obnoxious scam calls.
“We must leave no stone unturned.”
Morrisey's office says Avid Telecom is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service provider that sells data, phone numbers, dialing software and/or expertise to help its customers make mass robocalls. It also serves as an intermediate provider and allegedly facilitated or helped route illegal robocalls across the country. Between December 2018 and January 2023, Avid sent or attempted to transmit more than 24.5 billion calls. More than 90 percent of those calls lasted less than just 15 seconds, which indicates they likely were robocalls.
The complaint also alleges Avid helped make hundreds of millions of calls using spoofed or invalid caller ID numbers, including more than 8.4 million calls that appeared to be coming from government and law enforcement agencies, as well as private companies.
Avid Telecom allegedly sent or transmitted scam calls about Social Security Administration scams, Medicare scams, auto warranty scams, Amazon scams, DirecTV scams, credit card interest rate reduction scams and employment scams, according to the AGs.
The federal complaint arises from the nationwide bipartisan Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force. The task force is investigating and taking legal action against those responsible for routing significant volumes of illegal robocall traffic into and across the United States.
West Virginia joined the lawsuit with Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Washington D.C., Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Alaska and South Dakota are the only states not involved in the lawsuit.
U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona case number 4:23-cv-00233