 The announcement is a breakthrough in the fight by Madigan and other states to
put a stop to cellphone cramming. Commercial premium short messaging services,
or PSMS, account for the majority of third-party charges on cellphones and for
the overwhelming majority of cramming complaints reported to Madigan's office.
"This development is a major victory for consumers," Madigan said.
"Eliminating charges for premium texts will go a long way toward preventing
scammers from illegally profiting by sneaking unauthorized charges onto our
monthly cellphone bills."
Cramming happens when third-party vendors use people's phone numbers much
like a credit card. Vendors add charges to phone bills for bogus products or
services, such as celebrity gossip items, horoscopes and joke-of-the-day
offerings, which consumers and businesses never requested — and never used. But
because the charges are unauthorized, consumers rarely, if ever, detect the
scam, allowing the scammer to illegally profit for months at a time.
Wireless cramming has become an emerging source of consumer fraud, much like
it did on landline phones before the practice was banned in Illinois. In 2012,
Madigan drafted and negotiated a law that banned unauthorized charges on
landline phones, making Illinois only the second state in the nation to ban the
practice on wired phone lines. But as more people use cellphones as their
primary phones, scam artists are now migrating to wireless billing schemes,
prompting the need for stronger consumer protections.
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The attorney general's office has filed 30 lawsuits against
crammers. Among the most glaring targets for these scams was cited
in Madigan's 2009 lawsuit against US Credit Find Inc., a Venice,
Calif.-based operation, which crammed a Springfield public library's
dial-a-story telephone line.
Madigan has been an outspoken advocate for a nationwide ban on
phone bill cramming, having testified before the U.S. Senate
Commerce Committee on the matter and calling on the Federal Trade
Commission to address the growing problem of cellphone cramming as
the commission conducts a national examination of trends involving
unauthorized charges on mobile phone bills.
For more information on how to
protect against phone bill cramming or to report being scammed,
contact Attorney General Madigan's Consumer Fraud Hotlines:
[Text from file received from the office
of
Illinois Attorney General Lisa
Madigan] |
