INDIANA – Attorney General Todd Rokita, whose office has already secured more than $200 million in penalties against illegal and annoying robocallers since 2021, announced he is partnering with a bipartisan coalition of 49 attorneys general in calling on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to strengthen the Robocall Mitigation Database (RMD) and shut down the remaining loopholes for fraudulent calls.
Voice service providers are required to submit a filing with the RMD before they can accept and route call traffic through the U.S. communications network. That filing must include information about the provider’s business and robocall mitigation practices. Downstream providers are only allowed to accept calls from providers that are included in the RMD. However, bad actors are currently able to enter and stay in the database with minimal effort and limited impediments.
“These calls aren’t just annoying—they’re weapons scammers can use to steal your personal information and hard-earned money,” Attorney General Rokita said. “We need stricter rules and systems to increase accountability and shut down the pipelines that let scammers flood our phones with fraud. My office and I will continue working to hold robocallers and enablers accountable and make it harder for fraudsters to reach Hoosiers.”
In 2025, Attorney General Rokita co-led Operation Robocall Roundup, a multistate crackdown by the Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force. Phase 1 targeted 37 noncompliant voice providers. The FCC has since ordered at least 16 of them to fix their practices or removed them from the RMD entirely, cutting off their ability to route calls across the U.S. network. Phase 2 expanded the crackdown to four of the country’s largest intermediate providers and pushed the FCC for tougher Know Your Customer and Know Your Upstream Provider rules.
Today’s letter builds directly on those results.
“We’ve already forced bad actors out of the system, but the current database still has too many loopholes,” Attorney General Rokita said. “The FCC needs to bolster this database now — with real vetting, real accountability, and real consequences — so we can shut down robocallers for good.”
The attorneys general are calling on the FCC to improve the effectiveness of the RMD by strengthening filing obligations and deterring bad actors and noncompliant providers from appearing in the RMD. These improvements could allow the RMD to serve as the authoritative resource for promoting transparency and accountability around all providers’ robocall mitigation practices. It would allow the FCC’s tool to serve as a barrier to entry, reducing illegal call traffic.
In addition to what the FCC is already doing, the attorneys general encourage it to:
- Ensure that all information in the RMD is accurate and complete. The FCC should thoroughly vet all information submitted to the RMD before allowing a provider to appear in the database and to start sending call traffic through the network.
- Require additional disclosures. The FCC should require providers to disclose their use of third parties, related entities, the legitimacy of claims of a domestic presence, and access to numbering resources.
- Make it more difficult for bad actors to enter or re-enter the RMD. The attorneys general support the FCC’s proposed methods to suspend or remove bad actors from the RMD, strengthen the filing format and content of robocall mitigation plans, and require that RMD filers provide evidence of solvency.
- Hold providers responsible for all filings done on their behalf. The coalition does not oppose allowing for third-party submissions on behalf of providers to the RMD, as long as providers and their principals are responsible for the information submitted on their behalf.
- Impose additional certification requirements to allow for quicker removal from the RMD when necessary. Providers should be required to certify that they have not submitted false or misleading information, are in compliance with all applicable FCC robocall rules, and will respond within 24 hours to traceback requests.
- Require providers to notify their upstream customers and downstream providers of FCC orders and notices. The FCC should require providers subject to an FCC removal order, suspension, or mandatory blocking order to notify their calling customers of the same. It should further allow the downstream providers of the voice service providers subject to such orders to also notify those same customers that their calls will be blocked if they continue to attempt to send their call traffic through that provider that was issued an FCC order.
- Make historical RMD filings public. The historical data of providers that have been removed from the RMD would be useful to law enforcement and others.
- Implement all proposed rules as soon as possible and maintain RMD obligations in the meantime. If the proposals to strengthen the RMD are adopted, the RMD is set to become a reliable tool to help safeguard the communications network against illegal robocalls, making swift implementation crucial. The FCC should also keep in place all obligations that protect against bad actors until reinforced guardrails are implemented.
Hoosier consumers can file complaints about robocalls (or “live” violators of the Do Not Call List) with the Indiana Attorney General’s Office here or by calling 1-888-834-9969 or by email at donotcall@atg.in.gov.
The full letter is available here.
