Federal Communications Commission FCC 16-14 STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER AJIT PAI Re: OneLink Communications, Inc., File No. EB-TCD-13-00007004, NAL/Acct. No.: 201632170001, FRN: 0007539471; TeleDias Communications, Inc., File No. EB-TCD-16- 00020892 NAL/Acct. No.: 201632170002, FRN: 0007513815; TeleUno, Inc., File No. EB-TCD- 16-00020893, NAL/Acct. No.: 201632170003, FRN: 0005835558; Cytel, Inc., File No. EB- TCD-16-00020894, NAL/Acct. No.: 201632170004, FRN: 0020071205. Over the past several years, we’ve increasingly seen hucksters and criminals profit from reselling telephone services to American consumers without their consent. As I remarked last year, there is now a market for fraud. It’s a market in which “fly-by-night operators have figured out how to profit from skirting our rules rather than complying with them.” 1 And it’s a market our own rules created because they specifically prohibit a carrier from verifying whether a carrier-change request is legitimate or not. 2 Today’s case may be the worst yet. OneLink and its affiliates (OneLink) allegedly used telemarketers to pretend to be package delivery companies in order to trick consumers into reciting certain words like “Yes” or “051580.” OneLink even went so far as to spoof telephone numbers so that a consumer looking at caller ID would think the Post Office was calling. OneLink then spliced the recordings it made of these calls together with a standard third-party verification tape to justify changing their telephone carrier. And it specifically targeted Americans with Latino surnames, sometimes including Spanish recordings even when the target didn’t speak Spanish. To put it mildly, OneLink’s conduct was appalling. That’s why I’m grateful to my colleagues for agreeing with my two key requests in this matter. First: to prosecute OneLink for the full $29.6 million forfeiture it deserves under our precedent. Second: to consider revoking OneLink’s authorizations to offer telephone service in the United States once it has an opportunity to respond to this Notice of Apparent Liability. For conduct this egregious, the book should be thrown. 1 GPSPS, Inc., File No.: EB-TCD-14-00016988, NAL/Acct. No.: 201532170011, FRN: 0022128334, Forfeiture Order, 30 FCC Rcd 7814, 7817 (2015) (Statement of Commissioner Ajit Pai). 2 47 C.F.R. § 64.1120(a)(2) (“An executing carrier shall not verify the submission of a change in a subscriber’s selection of a provider of telecommunications service received from a submitting carrier.”).