Florida attorney general accuses Kendall business of facilitating fraudulent robocalls

A lawsuit filed in Miami federal court by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody accuses a business based in a Kendall apartment of being a national leader in transmitting millions of fraudulent foreign robocalls. The suit seeks damages up to $1,500 per call and $30,000 per day of continuous violation.

Smartbiz Telecom says Moody overstates how much control it has over its users’ calls.

Smartbiz is a VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol service, using the internet to send phone calls. Online state records say Smartbiz was registered to do business in Florida on Sept. 26, 2016, by Jose Olivar.

Olivar and Eduardo Borrero, who the company website list as CEO and CFO, respectively, are the two listed officers, with Mayra Alejandra Garcia being the registered agent. Smartbiz’s address, a unit at 14230 SW 57th Ln., is in Kendall’s Sienna Villas Condo.

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But the source of too many Smartbiz phone calls, the lawsuit claims, are scammers both inside and from outside the United States. The suit mentions calls familiar to anyone with a cellphone: calls about faux expensive purchases made on your Amazon account, offering 0% interest rate deals on credit card debt, or threats involving your Social Security number.

A ringing bother to most people, these calls hook enough victims that the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book for 2021 said consumers reported $692 million in losses through fraudulent robocalls.

The lawsuit quotes statistics from Industry Traceback Group, an FCC-appointed consortium with job of managing tracebacks on “the origin of suspected unlawful robocalls.”

The lawsuit says ITG has told Smartbiz at least 255 times since April 7, 2020, about such calls over Smartbiz’s network.

“According to records produced by the ITG, Smartbiz is one of the most prolific transmitters of illegal robocalls in the United States,” the lawsuit states. “Of the approximately 1,225 companies that have received tracebacks, only 28 have received more tracebacks than Smartbiz.

“That puts Smartbiz in the 98th percentile for transmitting illegal robocalls.”

The lawsuit goes on to accuse Smatbiz of willfully ignoring obvious signs of robocalls by its customers.

Through attorney Edward Maldonado, Smartbiz emailed a statement to the Miami Herald:

“SmartBiz Telecom is presently reviewing the lawsuit carefully. It looks forward to responding and allowing a bigger picture to be seen beyond the Attorney General’s initial allegations. They are admittedly disappointed in how the Florida Attorney General’s Office has characterized SmartBiz Telecom’s technical role in a call path and its actual level of control or knowledge it may have regarding any given call that it provided signaling between wholesale providers. They reserve any further comments until a later date and as the case progresses.”