(Credit: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
The Federal Communications Commission is blaming a little-known VoIP provider for staging a robocall scam that uses PlayStation 5 orders as bait to trick consumers into responding.
On Tuesday, the FCC threatened to blacklist Montana-based VoIP provider SK Teleco for allegedly facilitating the robocall campaign on its network. The FCC cites data from an industry watchdog that traced 29 of the robocalls to SK Teleco.
The scam impersonates Walmart and claims someone has made an expensive PS5 order through the user’s account. The prerecorded robocalls usually feature someone saying: "A preauthorized purchase of PlayStation 5 special edition with Pulse 3D headset is being ordered from your Walmart account for an amount of 919 dollars 45 cents. To cancel your order or to connect with one of our customer support representatives, please press 1. Thank you."
If victims pressed 1, they were connected to a live human operator. In some cases, those people impersonated a federal agency and phished for personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers, the FCC said.
Third-party robocall blocking service YouMail estimates that “nearly 8 million robocalls related to this campaign were placed to call recipients” between January and April, the FCC adds.
Although the Walmart-PS5 robocall scam can be traced back to 2023, "SK Teleco appears to have been the primary source of Walmart impersonation robocalls during the past year," the FCC says. "If SK Teleco fails to take swift action to prevent scam calls, the FCC will require all other providers to no longer accept call traffic from SK Teleco."
The agency is giving SK Teleco 48 hours to "effectively mitigate illegal traffic and 14 days to take steps to prevent a reoccurrence of such traffic on their network.”
SK Teleco didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. It also ignored previous FCC inquiries and routed Walmart pre-authorized calls to another voice service provider "in an apparent attempt to avoid detection,” the commission says.
In August, a coalition of state prosecutors also sent warning letters to SK Teleco and 36 other voice providers that were found facilitating robocalls.