The American Bankers Association today commended the Federal Communications Commission for proposing to impose a forfeiture on U.S. voice service provider Voxbeam Telecommunications for transmitting foreign-originated calls that appeared to “spoof fraud prevention or customer services phone numbers belonging to U.S. financial institutions.”
Last year, an unnamed financial institution filed a complaint with the FCC stating that unknown entities were calling its bank customers with spoofed caller ID information, making it appear that the calls came from the institution’s fraud reporting number on the back of the bank’s debit cards. The FCC determined that U.S. provider Voxbeam was transmitting calls from Axfone, a voice service provider located in Czechia, even though Axfone was not, and has never been, listed in the FCC’s Robocall Mitigation Database, in violation of FCC rules.
According to the FCC enforcement action, call detail records obtained from Voxbeam show that it transmitted 60,873 calls bearing U.S. caller IDs to consumers and others located in the United States during a three-day period from March 31 to April 2, 2025, from 2,812 distinct caller IDs. Many of the caller IDs reflected phone numbers belonging to large U.S. banks, according to the FCC.
ABA has raised concerns about voice service providers that originate or transmit illegal calls, including calls that spoof banks’ names and phone numbers. In a comment letter in January, ABA unveiled data showing that many illegally spoofed calls appear to be legitimate, in that the originating voice service provider has made a representation that it knows the caller and knows the caller has the legal right to the calling number – that is, the calls were “A-level” or “B-level” attested under the FCC’s existing “STIR/SHAKEN” call authentication framework. In one analysis conducted for ABA of 12,900 calls that illegally spoofed telephone numbers belonging to 47 large banks, retailers and healthcare providers, more than half of the calls received A-level or B-level attestation.
