FCC hits telecom firm that enabled bank impersonation calls

• Key insight: The action, which comes as fraud against consumers continues to rise, marks the FCC’s latest effort to crack down on illegal robocalls.
• Supporting data: In 2025, consumers lost $15.9 billion due to fraud, up more than 30% from the prior year, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
• Forward look: The telecom provider, Voxbeam, can now respond to the FCC’s notice with evidence and legal arguments.

The Federal Communications Commission is seeking to charge a telecommunications company $4.5 million for allegedly facilitating bank impersonation calls, marking the agency’s latest move to curb phone call-related fraud.

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As bank impersonation scams rise, the FCC in recent years has sought to crack down with rulemaking and enforcement actions against providers that facilitate illegal robocalls. The push for stepped-up telecommunications regulation has spanned the Biden and Trump administrations.

The FCC alleged Thursday that Orlando, Fla.-based Voxbeam Telecommunications was “apparently liable” for channeling tens of thousands of illegal calls into the U.S. from an unapproved provider. Many of the calls displayed spoofed numbers belonging to American banks, including Bank of America and JPMorganChase. 

“Companies like Voxbeam must ensure they are not accepting traffic from sketchy operators,” said FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr in a prepared statement. “These gateway providers are the on-ramps to American phone networks and with that business model comes significant responsibility.”

The commission said Voxbeam had transmitted financial impersonation robocalls from noncompliant and long-dormant accounts, and that the call traffic came from a customer called Axfone, a Czechia-based provider that isn’t listed in the commission’s robocall mitigation database. Voice service providers like Voxbeam are prohibited from accepting call traffic from providers not listed in the database, “because unlisted providers pose a higher risk of carrying illegal robocalls,” the FCC said.

In 2025, consumers lost $15.9 billion due to fraud, up more than 30% from the prior year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Imposter scams accounted for one million complaints, or about one-third of the total, and made up some $3.5 billion of losses. 

Last year, the FCC issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to mitigate illegal robocalls by increasing requirements to verify caller identity and origin. A group of banking trade organizations, including the Bank Policy Institute and the American Bankers Association, said in a comment letter that while financial institutions spend billions of dollars on financial crime compliance, they need help.

“We need a whole-of-government strategy to address this serious problem, and the FCC has a critical role to play,” the letter stated.

The banking groups added that the commission should go further in its work by specifying steps that voice service providers must take to comply with existing rules. The FCC should also require providers to verify that the caller has the legal right to the number that will be displayed in the recipient’s caller ID, the groups said.

Banks, regulators and trade groups have sought to educate consumers about how to spot spoofing and other fraud schemes, as criminal organizations increasingly use advanced technology and artificial intelligence that make scam calls hard to spot.

Last year, Minnesota Vikings linebacker Dallas Turner lost about $240,000 after he received a call from someone impersonating a JPMorgan banker, who convinced him to wire money to two business accounts.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which the Trump administration has defanged in the last year, had previously often been the main line of defense and redress for victims of financial fraud.

The FCC’s recent moves aim to stop fraud attempts further upstream, before they reach consumers.

The commission launched the investigation that led to the Thursday action after a financial institution, which the FCC didn’t name, filed a complaint claiming that its customers had been receiving fraudulent calls. The financial institution said in its complaint that some customers had been defrauded by the spoofed calls, which had appeared to come from the financial institution itself.

Out of nearly 61,000 calls that Voxbeam transmitted from Axfone between March 31, 2025 and April 3, 2025, some 80% of the caller IDs were associated with Chase Bank or Bank of America, an FCC investigation found.

Bank of America declined to comment, and JPMorgan did not respond to a request for comment.

“Voxbeam has an obligation to block traffic from providers not listed in the [robocall mitigation database] and an obligation to take all reasonable steps to protect consumers from likely scam robocalls,” the FCC said in a press release. 

The FCC says on its website that unwanted calls, including illegal and spoofed robocalls, are the agency’s “top consumer complaint and a top consumer protection priority.”

The Thursday action isn’t the FCC’s first foray into stopping bank impersonation schemes.

In 2023, the FCC and state enforcement counterparts jointly issued a cease-and-desist order to Identidad Advertising Development, a gateway voice service provider that it said had carried an apparently legal robocall campaign.

The FCC said that its latest proposed action contains only allegations and a proposed monetary penalty, and that neither are final commission actions. Voxbeam can respond with evidence and legal arguments, which the commission will consider before acting further to resolve the case. Voxbeam did not respond Friday to a request for comment.