1,141 Calls, $5.1 Million: The FCC's Proposed Fine Over Vote-by-Mail Robocalls

In 2020, people got a prerecorded call telling them that if they voted by mail, their "personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts."

None of that was true. Not a word. And on August 24, 2021, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposed a $5,134,500 fine against the people behind it.

So what happened?

The FCC's Notice of Apparent Liability, adopted August 23, 2021, names John M. Burkman, Jacob Alexander Wohl and J.M. Burkman & Associates LLC. The FCC describes Burkman and Wohl as lobbyists and political consultants based in Arlington, Virginia, who used the name "Project-1599" for political activities.

Here's how the FCC says it unfolded:

• On September 15, 2020, the FCC was alerted that thousands of prerecorded calls had apparently been placed by Burkman and Wohl, and it got consumer complaints too.
• FCC staff traced complaints to calls placed on August 26 and September 14, 2020.
• Working with the Ohio Attorney General's Office, the FCC identified two dialing service providers that placed the calls. Their subpoena responses named Burkman and Wohl as the customers and provided call records for every call.
• FCC staff listened to samples and confirmed the calls were prerecorded.

The FCC found 1,141 apparently unlawful prerecorded calls to wireless numbers without consent. At $4,500 per call, that's $5,134,500. Read the FCC Notice of Apparent Liability against Burkman and Wohl.

Here's the thing ... content doesn't matter here

You might think this is a free speech case. Political calls, right?

But the FCC's rule here doesn't care what the message says. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) bans prerecorded calls to cell phones without prior express consent, unless there's an emergency. The FCC says that "applies regardless of the content of prerecorded messages placed to wireless numbers."

Read that again. Political, commercial, whatever. No consent, no prerecorded call to a cell phone.

And under the TRACED Act, the FCC could go straight to a proposed fine without issuing a citation first. So it did.

Where it stands

A Notice of Apparent Liability is a proposal. It lays out what the FCC thinks happened and what it thinks the fine should be. The parties get to respond before the FCC decides.

Why should you care?

Look, I get it. You're not running voter suppression robocalls. Good. Hell yes.

But a lot of people in this industry think political calls are some kind of free-for-all. They're not. And notice how the FCC found these guys: through the dialing platforms. Those platforms handed over customer names and every call record.

If you run a dialing platform, that's your future too. Keep clean records. You'll be asked for them.

What to do this week

• Get consent before any prerecorded call to a cell phone, political or not.
• Know your customers if you sell dialing services.
• Keep call records you can actually produce under subpoena.

$4,500 a call adds up fast. It's simple math.

Build it right, and you won't be the next headline. That's it.