190 Tracebacks and a "C" on Every Call: State AGs Warn iDentidad Telecom

On October 18, 2024, the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force sent a warning letter to iDentidad Advertising Development LLC, which does business as iDentidad Telecom, a Miami company. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced it the same day. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sent iDentidad a cease-and-desist letter that same day too.

Who's the task force?

It's a bipartisan group of 51 attorneys general, led by Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio. Their whole job is going after the companies that route illegal robocalls into and across the U.S.

What the letter says

The numbers are rough. According to the task force:

• USTelecom's Industry Traceback Group (ITG) issued at least 190 traceback notices to iDentidad since 2021, and more than 60 of them came after the company had already been warned by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the FCC.
• The traced campaigns included Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Social Security Administration (SSA) imposters, tax relief, utility disconnect scams and other impersonation calls. iDentidad was the gateway provider for almost 90% of that traffic.
• At least 37 traced calls since April 2023 came straight from foreign providers that weren't listed in the FCC's Robocall Mitigation Database. That's a no-no. You can't take those calls directly.
• ZipDX flagged 497 suspicious calls from 452 different calling numbers in a 12-month window, and over 470 of them went to numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry.

And then there's the part that made me laugh (sort of). According to the letter, 100% of those calls were signed with a "C" level STIR/SHAKEN attestation. A "C" basically says, "I have no idea who this caller is." But the task force says iDentidad was often the originating or gateway provider, which means it should have been signing "A" or "B" based on what it knew about its customers.

Am I right? You can't be the front door and then claim you never saw who walked in.

One more detail. Some people outside Illinois got calls with caller ID that looked like a toll-free hotline the Illinois Attorney General uses. The office says it never made those calls. Read the task force's notice letter to iDentidad.

Is this a lawsuit?

No. It's a warning. But the letter is clear: if iDentidad keeps routing this traffic, the attorneys general may go after the company and its owners for damages, civil penalties and injunctions. And Ellison reminded everyone that his office already sued Avid Telecom in 2023.

What to do this week

• Count your tracebacks. If the number keeps going up, something is broken.
• Check the Robocall Mitigation Database before you take a single call from a foreign provider.
• Sign calls honestly. Your attestation should match what you actually know about the customer.
• Watch for snowshoeing, where a caller rotates through tons of numbers to dodge call analytics.

It's not rocket science. Know your customers, and don't be the pipe.