FCC fined two telemarketers for robocalls with over $225 million: What you need to know

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The Federal Communications Commission fined two Texas-based telemarketing companies an unprecedented $225 million on Wednesday for making automated sales phone calls, and robocalls, in 2019.

The marketers, under the business names Rising Eagle and JSquared Telecom, used robocalls to falsely sell short-term health insurance plans. They made about one billion robocalls, according to the FCC.

Robocalls are a daily annoyance for many Americans, and they have been rising in recent years, with some estimates showing that billions are made per month. The number of spam calls received in the United States rose 26 percent in the last year, according to Robokiller, an anti-spam call app.

In December 2019, Congress passed the TRACED Act, which increases potential fines for a single robocall to $10,000. It also requires major carriers to update their systems to make it more difficult to falsely spoof numbers that show up on Caller ID.