Operation Robocall Roundup: State Attorneys General Take On the Phone Companies

Who is behind it

In 2022, 51 attorneys general formed the Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force. It is led by the attorneys general of North Carolina, Indiana and Ohio. The group investigates and sues companies that carry large volumes of illegal robocall traffic into and across U.S. phone networks. Its best-known case is a 2023 multistate lawsuit against Avid Telecom. In that suit, 49 attorneys general alleged the company sent or carried more than 7.5 billion illegal robocalls, according to the Illinois Attorney General. Those are allegations in a lawsuit, not findings.

Operation Robocall Roundup is the task force’s campaign that began in 2025.

Phase one: 37 warning letters on August 7, 2025

On August 7, 2025, the task force sent warning letters to 37 voice providers. According to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s announcement, the providers had not complied with FCC rules. The failures listed were not answering traceback requests, not registering in the FCC’s Robocall Mitigation Database, and not filing robocall mitigation plans. Letters also went to 99 downstream carriers that accepted traffic from those 37 companies.

The FCC mentioned the effort in its own August 25, 2025 release. It noted that seven of the 37 were providers it had already removed from its database. We track those FCC removals in our story on Robocall Mitigation Database removals.

Phase two: four major carriers on December 3, 2025

On December 3, 2025, North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson announced phase two. The task force directed four large voice providers, Inteliquent, Bandwidth, Lumen and Peerless, to stop transmitting suspected illegal robocalls. It gave them 30 days. “Phase 2 of Robocall Roundup is about the larger companies that are knowingly pushing through millions of scam robocalls,” Jackson said.

The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s release gave one example of the data behind it. It said Inteliquent had received 9,712 traceback notices since 2019. It also cited an estimated 1.425 billion robocalls impersonating the Social Security Administration or the IRS over three to four years. A traceback notice is an alert from industry investigators that a carrier handled a call tied to a suspected illegal campaign. These figures are the attorneys general’s allegations and estimates. No court has ruled on them, and the task force described the calls as “suspected illegal robocalls.”

What phase one achieved

The task force reported these results from the August letters:

• 13 of the warned companies were removed from the FCC’s Robocall Mitigation Database.
• 19 companies stopped appearing in traceback results.
• At least four providers ended contracts with high-risk customer accounts.

Those results come from the attorneys general’s own announcements. They show movement at the carrier level. They do not measure how many calls stopped reaching people.

What this means if you get robocalls

Actions against carriers work upstream. When a carrier cuts off a customer that was pushing scam calls, that campaign has to find a new route. You may notice some patterns drop off, like fake Social Security calls, while others continue.

These actions do not give you a payment. State attorneys general sue to protect the public, and any money they recover goes where the court or settlement directs. Your own right to sue under the TCPA is separate. It usually targets the company that made the call or the seller that paid for it. Our page on how to sue a telemarketer walks through that process.

Impostor calls, like fake IRS or Social Security calls, are usually outright fraud from callers who hide their identity. Those are hard to turn into a private case. Sales robocalls from a named company, such as Medicare plan calls or “cardholder services” calls, are more often traceable.

What to do next

Report impostor and scam calls to your state attorney general’s consumer office and to the FTC. Those reports feed the traceback and enforcement work described above. Our robocall reporting guide lists where to file.

If the calls are pitching a product from a company you can name, keep a log of every call and save voicemails. A seller you can identify is a potential defendant, and a free case review can tell you whether the calls cross the line.