FCC robocall enforcement actions

Robocall fines are reported in headlines as though the money changes hands the day the FCC announces them. It generally does not. The cases below are read from the Commission's released orders rather than from press coverage, and each one is labelled with where it actually stands: a final forfeiture order, a negotiated settlement, or a proposed penalty the target is still contesting.

$234.92 million

in final forfeiture orders across the 2 concluded cases below

$10,000

maximum penalty per unlawfully spoofed call Congress authorises under the Truth in Caller ID Act

5 years

from forfeiture order to appellate affirmance in the one case below that has been litigated to the end

The cases

$225 millionForfeiture order (final)Released March 18, 2021

Rising Eagle Capital Group, JSquared Telecom, John Spiller and Jakob Mears

The largest forfeiture in FCC history, for roughly one billion spoofed robocalls selling short-term health insurance.

The Commission found that the Texas-based operation transmitted approximately one billion robocalls in under five months, falsely implying the plans on offer came from insurers including Blue Cross Blue Shield and Cigna. The caller ID displayed on those calls belonged to other people and businesses.

The order records that one company whose number was spoofed was overwhelmed by angry consumers calling it back — a recurring pattern, and the reason a number appearing in complaint data is not necessarily the number that placed the call.

Where it stands: Rising Eagle petitioned for reconsideration. The Commission denied the petition and affirmed the full $225,000,000 in June 2023 (FCC-23-46).

Rule relied on: Truth in Caller ID Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227(e); 47 C.F.R. § 64.1604
Calls established: approx. 1 billion
Document: FCC-21-35

$9.92 millionForfeiture order (final)Released January 14, 2021

Scott Rhodes

Neighbour-spoofed robocalls carrying targeted harassment, and the clearest public example of a fine being pursued to judgment.

Between May and December 2018 Rhodes altered his caller ID to display local numbers so that recipients would answer, then played prerecorded messages aimed at specific communities and individuals. The FCC initially proposed $12,910,000; it reduced the figure to $9,918,000 after accepting that one caller ID used in a California campaign was validly assigned to him and so was not spoofed.

The arithmetic is set out in the order: a $1,000 base forfeiture per unlawful call across 4,959 calls, doubled for egregiousness.

Where it stands: The Justice Department sued to collect. A federal court in Montana entered the full penalty and an injunction in 2023, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed it in June 2026, rejecting an Eighth Amendment excessive-fines challenge.

Rule relied on: Truth in Caller ID Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227(e)(1); 47 C.F.R. § 64.1604
Calls established: 4,959
Document: FCC-21-16

$1 millionConsent decree (settled)Released August 21, 2024

Lingo Telecom, LLC

The AI voice-cloning case: a carrier settled over spoofed calls that impersonated President Biden before the 2024 New Hampshire primary.

Calls placed on 21 January 2024 used a generative-AI clone of President Biden's voice to discourage voting in the New Hampshire presidential primary, and displayed the spoofed number of a former state party official. The scheme was directed by a political consultant; Lingo Telecom was the provider that carried the traffic and signed it with a caller-ID attestation the FCC found unwarranted.

Lingo agreed to a $1,000,000 civil penalty and a compliance plan the FCC described as the first of its kind, requiring it to apply Know Your Customer and Know Your Upstream Provider checks before attesting to caller ID.

Where it stands: Settled by consent decree. The penalty is half the amount the Enforcement Bureau had proposed in May 2024.

Rule relied on: STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication, 47 C.F.R. § 64.6301(a)
Document: DA-24-790

$4.49 millionProposed penalty (contested)Released February 4, 2025

Telnyx LLC

The first proposed penalty aimed squarely at a provider's customer-vetting failures rather than at the caller.

The FCC alleges that accounts opened with minimal and unverified information were used to place 1,797 calls in under two days, impersonating a non-existent FCC "Fraud Prevention Team" and demanding payment — in one instance $1,000 in gift cards. Recipients included FCC staff and their families.

The proposed figure is arithmetic rather than a headline: with no base forfeiture set for the rule in question, the Commission borrowed the $2,500-per-call figure from its robocall-mitigation rules and applied it to each of the 1,797 calls. It declined an upward adjustment because the provider self-reported promptly.

Where it stands: This is a Notice of Apparent Liability, not a fine. Telnyx contests the allegations, saying it followed industry practice and closed the accounts within 17 hours. No final penalty has been assessed.

Rule relied on: Robocall mitigation and customer vetting, 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(n)(4)
Calls established: 1,797
Document: FCC-25-10

Why a fine is not a payment

The FCC can issue a forfeiture order, but it cannot seize the money. Under 47 U.S.C. § 504(a) an unpaid forfeiture is recovered through a civil suit brought by the Department of Justice in federal district court, where the target can contest it again. The Scott Rhodes case is the clearest illustration of what that timeline looks like in practice: a forfeiture order in January 2021, a DOJ suit later that year, summary judgment and an injunction in 2023, and an appellate ruling in June 2026 — more than five years for a case the Commission had already decided.

This is why the enforcement record and the volume of calls consumers actually receive look so disconnected. The penalties are real and, when pursued, they hold up. They simply arrive years after the campaign has finished and the numbers behind it have been abandoned.

What this means for a number that called you

Two things in these orders bear directly on how the complaint data on this site should be read. First, the caller ID displayed is frequently not the caller: the Rising Eagle order records an uninvolved business being overwhelmed by callbacks from consumers who had been shown its number. Second, the volumes are enormous relative to the number of people who bother to file — one billion calls produced a complaint record measured in thousands. A number with a handful of complaints against it may have called far more people than the count suggests.

All figures and dates on this page are taken from the linked FCC documents. Amounts are the sum stated in the operative order, which in several cases differs from the amount originally proposed. Nothing here is legal advice.