Georgia's Top Robocallers, State Gets Help From Phone Companies

ATLANTA, GA — Georgia's attorney general says a dozen phone companies have agreed to help end the more than 280 million illegal robocalls made each month in the state. The phone companies have agreed to adopt eight principles to fight illegal robocalls and make it easier for attorneys general to investigate and prosecute bad actors nationwide, officials said Thursday.

A record 5.2 billion robocalls were placed nationwide in January 2019, while 4.7 billion such calls were made last month, according to YouMail's robocall index, and a majority of them were scam or telemarketing calls. That includes 289.3 million robocalls in Georgia in July 2019, an average of 22.8 for every person in the state.

“Not only are illegal robocalls an incredible annoyance to the people of Georgia, they can cause significant financial harm to our citizens,” said Attorney General Chris Carr. “We are pleased to join in this fight with our partners in the public and private sectors and will continue to work together to prevent scams from happening and go after the bad actors if they do.”

Here are the top 20 robocallers in Georgia last month, showing the number, the caller ID and the type of call. They include legitimate debt collectors, credit card companies, Comcast, a utility and a cell phone company, along with spammers.

1. 800-955-6600, Capital One Payments/Collections, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder

2.800-266-2278, Comcast, Customer Call

3 .678-774-7560, Allstate, Vehicle Insurance Spam

4. 855-245-7098, Transworld Systems Incorporated, Debt Collector

5. 888-660-5890, Georgia Power, Customer Call

6. 888-222-4227, Santander, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder

7. 855-895-3382, Fingerhut, Payment Reminder

8. 470-333-1253, Peerless Network, Rewards Scam

9. 425-276-8682, Receivables Performance Management, Debt Collector

10. 302-927-3305, Medical Customer Call, Insurance Customer Call

11. 877-647-8552, Wells Fargo, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder

12. 800-292-7508, Synchrony Bank, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder

13. 404-800-0716, Credit Card Payment Reminder, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder

14. 855-419-7365, AT&T, Customer Call

15. 877-647-8551, Wells Fargo, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder

16. 404-800-0708, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder

17. 800-321-9637, Exeter Finance, Loan Payment Reminder

18. 877-710-1116, Securus Inmate, Prison Call Consent

19. 800-947-6229, Macy's Card Payment Reminder, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder

20. 855-885-5834, Synchrony Bank, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder

Phone companies pledging to help states include AT&T, Bandwidth, CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, Consolidated, Frontier, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Verizon and Windstream.

Carr's office said phone companies will work to prevent illegal robocalls by:

• Implementing free call-blocking technology at the network level;
• Making available to customers additional, free, easy-to-use call blocking and labeling tools;
• Implementing technology to authenticate that callers are coming from a valid source;
• Monitoring their networks for robocall traffic.

Phone companies will assist attorneys’ general anti-robocall enforcement by:

• Knowing who their customers are so those making robocalls can be identified and investigated;
• Investigating and taking action against suspicious callers – including notifying law enforcement and state attorneys general;
• Working with law enforcement, including state attorneys general, to trace the origins of illegal robocalls;
• Requiring telephone companies with which they contract to cooperate in traceback identification.

The FCC offers a few tips for those wanting to stop unwanted and illegal robocalls. Among them, don't answer calls from unknown numbers, do not respond to questions — especially those that can be answered with "yes" — and never give out personal information such as account numbers, Social Security numbers and mother's maiden names.