A bipartisan group of three influential US lawmakers today introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to combat widespread telephone scams, mainly originating overseas from countries including India, that defraud millions of Americans every year.
Introduced by Congresswoman Grace Meng, and Congressmen Joe Barton and Leonard Lance, the Anti-Spoofing Act of 2015 would target "caller ID spoofing", a growing scheme in which con artists disguise their phone numbers to make it appear that they're calling from a government agency, bank, police department, credit card company, pharmacy or hospital.
Among the popular spoofing schemes is the Internal Revenue Service scam in which the fraudster displays the real IRS phone number on an individual's caller ID.
The scammer claims to be an IRS employee and threatens arrest unless back taxes are immediately paid with a debit card or wire transfer, lawmakers said in a statement.
"The problem of caller ID spoofing has gotten out of control," said Meng, Barton and Lance.
"Millions of Americans continue to get ripped off by con artists and scammers who perpetrate this despicable crime, many losing thousands of dollars. It is way past time to reign in this disgraceful practice and this legislation would go a long way towards accomplishing that critical goal. We call on the House and Senate to pass our bill as soon as possible," they said.
In the last few years, officials have also detected a large number of such spoofing calls originating from several places in India including New Delhi and Gujarat and a number of Indians and people of Indian origin have been indicted on these accounts.
This legislation aims to combat spoofing by strengthening the Truth in Caller ID Act. The measure would broaden the law to prohibit spoofing by foreigners.
Presently, many US-based companies spoof calls to US residents but originate them from outside the US.
It would also broaden the law to include new internet-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services that enable callers to make outgoing-only calls from computers and tablets to mobile and landline phones, a practice that has contributed significantly to the spoofing problem.
The legislation would also broaden the law to include text messaging, a spoofing method that fraudsters use with increased regularity.
The House had passed a similar bipartisan legislation in the last Congress, but it did not move in the Senate.
This legislation is expected to be referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
For the US president to sign it into law, the legislation needs to be passed by both chambers of Congress - the House of Representatives and the Senate.
