Murrill joins push to cut scammer access to real phone numbers

(The Center Square) — Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is backing new federal rules aimed at cutting scammers off from one of the simplest tools used to reach consumers: real telephone numbers.Murrill joined 48 other attorneys general in asking federal regulators to make it harder for scammers to get real phone numbers, which they use to make robocalls look legitimate.Louisiana consumers filed 32,510 National Do Not Call complaints in fiscal 2025, ranking the state 30th per capita, according to the FTC’s latest data book.Of those complaints, 19,325 involved robocalls, 9,989 involved live callers and 3,196 did not report the call type. The most common topics reported in Louisiana were debt reduction, imposters and medical or prescription calls.The coalition’s July 7 filing responds to an FCC proposal that would expand robocall certification rules, require better reporting on where numbers go after they are resold and address “number cycling,” a practice in which callers rotate through large quantities of numbers to avoid detection.“I’m one of the many Louisianans who are sick and tired of robocalls constantly harassing and attempting to steal people’s money, identity, and private information,” Murrill said. “We need to make it harder for scammers to exploit legitimate phone numbers and easier for law enforcement to trace these scams back to the source.”Federal caller ID authentication rules were designed to combat the practice of making a call appear to come from a different number. But the attorneys general say scammers have adapted by using actual or legitimately obtained numbers and then cycling through them.The attorneys general are urging the FCC to expand certification obligations to all providers that obtain numbers directly from the North American Numbering Plan Administrator and to resellers that sell or assign numbers to others. They also support enhanced reporting requirements so regulators and law enforcement can trace a number through the reseller chain.The problem is not just a nuisance. The Federal Trade Commission said consumers reported about $16 billion in fraud losses in 2025, the highest amount on record and about 25% higher than the prior year. Imposter scams were the most commonly reported fraud category, with consumers reporting $3.5 billion in losses to those schemes.