Oregon AG Rayfield leads 49 attorneys general in fight against illegal robocalls

SALEM, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield is leading a bipartisan coalition of 49 attorneys general calling on the Federal Communications Commission to close regulatory loopholes and enforce stricter oversight of phone companies that route illegal robocalls.

The coalition is pushing the FCC to require telecommunications providers to thoroughly vet business partners and prevent fraudulent calls from entering the U.S. telephone network. According to coalition findings, Americans received more than 29.6 billion scam robocalls and text messages last year, resulting in nearly $2 billion in financial losses.

Phone calls typically travel through a chain of intermediate telephone companies before reaching a consumer. Federal rules, known as the “Know Your Upstream Provider” or KYUP regulations, require these service providers to take reasonable steps to verify that they are not accepting traffic from illegal scam operations. However, regulators noted that some companies skip required vetting procedures, allowing scam calls to pass through their systems uninterrupted.

Oregon Rayfield criticized phone companies that fail to screen upstream partners. “Oregonians shouldn't have to treat every unknown call like a threat,” Rayfield said. “Scammers are exploiting gaps in a system that's supposed to protect people and some phone companies are letting it happen because it's profitable to look the other way. If a company profits from routing calls onto our phones, it has a responsibility to know who it's doing business with and the FCC needs to hold them to that.”

The coalition submitted specific proposals requesting that the FCC establish clear minimum vetting standards for phone companies. These standards would require providers to collect verified details about companies sending call traffic, monitor those partners continuously and terminate contracts with noncompliant operators. The attorneys general also urged the FCC to mandate regular compliance checks, strengthen caller ID protections against number spoofing across all providers, establish meaningful financial penalties and enforce mandatory record-keeping to assist future law enforcement investigations.

The legal push is organized through the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, which launched Operation Robocall Roundup in 2025. In the first phase of the initiative, the task force issued warning letters to 37 smaller phone companies for failing to block suspicious call traffic. Following those warnings, the FCC recently ordered six of those companies to resolve their robocall issues or face potential disconnection from the national telephone network.

In its second phase, the task force expanded enforcement actions to four of the nation's largest telecommunications companies that route call traffic between providers. The coalition includes attorneys general from 48 other states, territories and districts, including California, N.Y., Texas, Fla., Ill. and Pennsylvania.