Attorney General James Urges Federal Government to Strengthen Know Your Customer Rules to Stop Illegal Robocalls 

NEW YORK – New York Attorney General Letitia James and a bipartisan coalition of 49 other attorneys general urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to strengthen its “Know Your Customer” (KYC) rules to help prevent scammers from making illegal robocalls. KYC rules require phone companies to know who is making calls through their networks and what kinds of business their customers are conducting. Phone companies use this information to terminate callers who use their networks to make unlawful calls and can decline to do business with customers that are not legitimate companies or cannot prove that they conduct lawful business. In a letter to FCC, Attorney General James and the coalition urge the agency to adopt additional KYC requirements for phone companies to help better detect and stop fraud.  

“Fraudsters are using their access to our country’s phone networks to flood New Yorkers with scam calls at all hours of the day,” said Attorney General James. “The companies that run our phone networks have a responsibility to stop these illegal robocalls. Together with a broad bipartisan coalition of attorneys general, we are calling on the federal government to strengthen requirements for phone companies to ensure robocallers are not abusing their networks.”

Robocalls are a pervasive source of fraud that costs Americans billions of dollars every year. In 2025, Americans received more than 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts and lost nearly $2 billion to these scams. Attorney General James and the coalition explain in their letter that current KYC requirements do not go far enough to stop robocallers from gaining access to U.S. telephone networks.

Illegal robocalls require access to a phone company’s network, making due diligence done by these companies critical to stopping scammers from reaching people. Attorney General James and the coalition urge the FCC to adopt new KYC rules in addition to what they’re already doing. These include:

• Requiring providers to understand their customers’ business. In addition to verifying a customer’s identity and existence, phone companies should also be required to examine and understand the customer’s business practices, reputation, history, intended use of their services, and compliance with state and federal laws. 
• Holding all providers to KYC standards. Even small service providers should be required to meet enhanced KYC standards. Scammers use providers, regardless of size, to access the communications network. In fact, illegal calls are often facilitated by smaller voice service providers. Not holding small providers to the same standards could cause them to be even more attractive to bad actors looking to use them to make illegal robocalls.  
• Require providers to collect additional information on high-risk customers. While KYC requirements should be universal, Attorney General James and the coalition support additional long-term monitoring of customers who are more likely to make illegal robocalls, such as those subscribing to high volume services.  

Joining Attorney General James in signing the letter to FCC are the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, American Samoa, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Attorney General James is a leader in multistate efforts to crack down on robocalls. In 2022, Attorney General James joined 50 other attorneys general in creating the Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force, which investigates and takes legal action against companies that are responsible for large amounts of robocall traffic. Earlier this month, Attorney General James and a bipartisan coalition of 48 other attorneys general called on FCC to adopt new measures to combat illegal robocalls. In August 2025, Attorney General James and the task force sent notices to 37 phone providers to stop routing fraudulent calls. In March 2025, Attorney General James and a bipartisan coalition of 27 other attorneys general filed an amicus brief supporting an FCC rule to stop telemarketers from obtaining consumers’ phone numbers without their consent. In May 2023, Attorney General James sued Avid Telecom (Avid), its owner Michael Lansky, and its vice president Stacey S. Reeves for routing billions of illegal robocalls nationwide and ignoring repeated warnings to stop.