Indiana sues firms for illegally routing PH scam robocalls to U.S.

Indiana’s attorney general sued three companies for allegedly helping scammers illegally route hundreds of millions of robocalls from the Philippines, India and Singapore to U.S. households.

The lawsuit filed Thursday, Oct. 14 in federal court in said the companies (including one operating from a trailer park) aided robocalls from abroad that were trying to carry out IRS and Social Security impostor scams and fake Amazon subscriptions and fake Apple support calls in the U.S., according to an AP report.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita accused Startel Communication LLC, of being a gateway for the overseas calls to reach U.S. households.

Startel, operating from a trailer park, allegedly arranged with two California telecommunications firms to route the robocalls throughout the U.S.

Piratel LLC of Los Alamitos, California, allegedly routed at least 3.1 million robocalls to Indiana numbers alone, and  VoIP Essential LLC of Fremont, California, routed 1.3 million calls to Indiana.

The two companies in California knew Startel was sending robocalls against Indiana and federal law, and were each paid more than $100,000 to ignore the violations, Rokita said.

Indiana officials said the California companies were warned about the robocalls during their investigation over the past year.

Startel, VoIP Essential and Piratel face billions of dollars in fines due to the large number of calls involved, the lawsuit said.