Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador has joined a coalition of 49 attorneys general urging the Federal Communications Commission to close loopholes that allow scammers to flood Americans’ phones with illegal robocalls — a problem that cost consumers an estimated $2 billion last year.

A Shifting Threat

For years, scammers relied on illegal “spoofing” — disguising their calls to appear as if they came from legitimate businesses or government agencies. After federal and state enforcement cracked down on that practice, fraudsters adapted by purchasing real, legitimate phone numbers to conduct their operations instead.

The new tactic allows scammers to evade spam filters by cycling through enormous volumes of phone numbers, using most of them only once or twice before moving on. The scale of the problem is staggering: Americans received roughly 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts in the past year alone.

A North Carolina enforcement case illustrated just how aggressive the abuse has become. In that matter, scammers routed more than 17.3 million calls through a single phone company in a single day, burning through phone numbers at a pace designed specifically to outrun detection systems.

What the Coalition Is Asking

The 49-state coalition, responding to proposed FCC rulemaking, is calling on the agency to impose stronger requirements on companies that are authorized to purchase and resell telephone numbers. The attorneys general are requesting that applicants for number access be required to certify they won’t use those numbers for illegal robocall activity.

The coalition is also pushing the FCC to mandate regular reporting on how phone numbers are sold and used, giving law enforcement better tools to trace illegal call traffic back to its source. Additional requests include a prohibition on selling numbers to entities that are not actually providing calling or texting services, a ban on number cycling, and tighter restrictions on the use of trial numbers — another avenue scammers have exploited.

The Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, which Labrador’s office participates in, first raised these concerns with the FCC back in 2021. The current letter is part of a continuing effort to push the agency toward enforceable standards that address the problem at its source — access to phone numbers themselves.

Labrador’s Statement

Labrador framed the effort as a matter of protecting Idaho families from financial harm. “Idahoans are tired of scammers swindling their families and flooding their phones with non-stop robocalls,” he said, adding that he is urging the FCC to “strengthen its rules to cut off scammers before they can target Idaho families.”

The attorney general has been active on multiple consumer protection and law enforcement fronts. His office recently wrapped up its defense of Idaho’s Defense of Life Act in federal court and has separately warned residents about permit fraud targeting development applicants in the Treasure Valley.

What Comes Next

The FCC will review the coalition’s comments as part of its rulemaking process. Whether and when the agency moves to finalize stronger certification and reporting requirements remains to be seen, but the breadth of the coalition — spanning nearly every state — is intended to signal widespread law enforcement support for action.

For Idaho consumers, the practical impact of tighter FCC rules would depend on enforcement. Even with stronger certification requirements in place, investigators would still need to trace violations through carriers and number resellers — a process the attorneys general argue would be made significantly easier by the regular reporting requirements they are requesting.

The push reflects a broader pattern in which state attorneys general have increasingly stepped into telecommunications enforcement, working alongside federal regulators to close gaps that individual states lack the authority to address on their own.