North Carolina AG sues company over scam phone calls

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein is seeking hundreds of billions of dollars in a lawsuit filed against a Texas company which claims it helped scammers place robocalls inundating phones.

The News & Observer of Raleigh reported that Texas-based telecommunications business Articul8 helped facilitate scam calls across the country, the lawsuit says. That includes tens of millions of calls to North Carolinians, even though the company either knew or should’ve known that it was helping criminals try to defraud people, according to the lawsuit.

Rather than targeting individual scammers, the state is targeting the company that has been routing their calls and making a good profit doing so, Stein said.

Articul8 didn't respond to the newspaper's email request for comment.

The lawsuit points to a period from December 2020 through April 2021, when it says Articul8 helped suspected scammers place more than 515 million robocalls.

Stein said his office knows of a woman in Raleigh who lost more than a million dollars. He said if the scammers who bilked the woman or anyone else in North Carolina were using Articul8’s services, then any money the state might win from the lawsuit might go toward paying them back for some of their losses.