Tired of scam callers? NC’s attorney general will tell them off on your voicemail

Sometimes a joke on Twitter can lead to a useful weapon against the scourge of modern phones: Telemarketing scammers.

That’s what happened when I responded to a tweet from N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein. He’d posted a video in which he answered an audience member’s phone while giving a speech. The caller on the line was a scammer, Stein said, and he told them they were breaking the law in North Carolina.

I joked in response that “I need a feature on my cell phone where instead of sending the spam call to voicemail, I can send it to a recording of the attorney general telling them off.”

Stein offered to make me such a recording, but he was immediately deluged by other North Carolina residents who wanted one too. So rather than spend his days recording voicemail greetings like a cast member from the NPR quiz show “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!”, Stein posted a downloadable voice note that anyone can use as a deterrent to telemarketers.

“Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of a North Carolinian,” Stein says on the recording. “I’m Attorney General Josh Stein. If you are a scammer or illegal robocaller, you are breaking the law and you must cease calling this number.

“If not, please leave a message.”

The attorney general’s office has initiatives to combat telemarketing scams, including a hotline — 1-877-5-NO-SCAM — that people can call if they’ve been a victim of a scam. “We’ll work to stop wire transfers or bank drafts by the scammers and help you avoid future scams,” the agency’s website says.

Similar issues caught the attention of state legislators this year. House Speaker Tim Moore sponsored the “Truth In Caller ID Act,” which fines telemarketers up to $5,000 for multiple violations of the law, including blocking a telephone subscriber’s caller ID service or spoofing a fake number on caller ID to make it appear like a local call. That bill passed the legislature unanimously, and Gov. Roy Cooper signed it into law on Aug. 1.

For more North Carolina government and politics news, listen to the Domecast politics podcast from The News & Observer and the NC Insider. You can find it on Megaphone, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.

This story was originally published November 19, 2019 at 5:23 PM.