FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
INQUIRIES: media@naag.org
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA— July 8, 2026—The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) today announced that a bipartisan coalition of 49 state and territory attorneys general called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to strengthen rules that would cut off scammers’ access to legitimate telephone numbers. Without that access, scammers can’t use real numbers to deceive and scam Americans. The Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force asked the FCC to work on this issue in 2021, and members of this coalition are now responding to the FCC’s proposed rules.
Last year, Americans received approximately 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts and lost nearly $2 billion to these scams. Scammers used to primarily illegally “spoof” other people’s phone numbers to make it appear as if a call was coming from a legitimate company or government agency. But scammers can’t do this as easily anymore after the federal government and state attorneys general took action to curb illegal spoofing. Now, scammers often purchase legitimate phone numbers and use them to make robocalls.
While most legitimate businesses have used the same phone number for many years, scammers cycle through millions of brand-new phone numbers, which helps them avoid detection by spam filters. In one North Carolina case, scammers made more than 17.3 million calls on a single day through a single phone company— but they generally didn’t reuse the same number more than twice, a common tactic among scammers.
In addition to the steps the FCC is already taking, the bipartisan attorneys general are asking the federal government to do more, including:
- Require every company authorized to purchase and resell phone numbers in North America to meet stronger certification requirements and to disclose how and to whom they assign numbers.
- Require these companies to submit regular reports on the sale and use of numbers, so law enforcement can trace illegal robocalls back to their sources. These reports will also help law enforcement hold all the companies in the call path accountable for selling or transmitting numbers used to conduct illegal robocalls.
- Require people and entities applying to access phone numbers to confirm they won’t use them to make illegal robocalls.
- Block the sale of phone numbers to entities that aren’t tied to a calling or texting service. Robocallers often buy these numbers without linking them to a legitimate phone service, since they don’t plan to use them for legitimate calling and texting.
- Prohibit number cycling, which is when an entity buys lots of numbers and then uses them on a rotating, sometimes single-use basis to avoid being detected by tools that flag numbers used to make illegal robocalls.
- Restrict the offering of trial numbers to discourage scammers from exploiting them to harm consumers.
The letter was led by the Attorneys General of Colorado, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Attorneys General of the following states joined in signing the letter: Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
A copy of the letter is available here.
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The National Association of Attorneys General is a nonpartisan organization of the attorneys general of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. NAAG provides a forum for exchanging knowledge, experiences, and insights on legal and law enforcement issues, and fosters bipartisan collaboration among its members to address common challenges and advance the rule of law. For more information, please visit NAAG’s website.
