Joint Trades Letter Urging FCC to Adopt Order to Combat Illegal Texts and Calls

Dear Ms. Dortch,

On October 2, 2024, Paul Benda and Jonathan Thessin of the American Bankers Association (ABA); Margot Saunders of the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC); James Akin of America's Credit Unions (ACU); Michael Pryor and Leah Dempsey of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, LLP, on behalf of ACU and ACA International; Brian Allen and Greg Williamson of the Bank Policy Institute; Aryeh Fishman of the Edison Electric Institute; and Gabriel Acosta of the Mortgage Bankers Association (collectively, the Organizations), met with Carmen Scurato, Legal Advisor for Consumer and Public Safety for Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

The Organizations attending the meeting represent a diverse range of stakeholders – from trade associations representing banks, credit unions, other financial services providers, and electric utility companies, to a consumer rights organization. The Organizations joined together for this meeting because they are united in their commitment to combating criminals who attempt to defraud consumers by impersonating legitimate businesses through illegally spoofed calls and text messages. In the meeting, the Organizations affirmed their support for the draft Report and Order released on September 5, 2024 (Order), which includes provisions to combat illegal calls and texts. The Organizations urged the Federal Communications Commission to adopt the Order without delay.

Texts that impersonate legitimate businesses harm consumers and undermine those businesses' ability to communicate with their customers. Bank impersonation texts – i.e., text messages sent by a criminal impersonating a bank – were the most common form of text message scam reported to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2022. As the FTC has described, criminals send texts to consumers, claiming to be from the consumer's financial institution, and ask the consumer to verify a large transaction they did not make. Consumers who respond are connected to a fake representative of the institution, who seeks to obtain the consumer's log-in credentials. The criminal then transfers money out of the consumer's account and to an account belonging to the criminal. The scam's median reported loss was $3,000 in 2022, according to the FTC, accounting for $330 million in aggregate reported losses that year. Impersonation texts have increased nearly twentyfold since 2019.

Download the joint comment letter to read the full text.