North Carolina Attorney General Files Lawsuit Against Company Responsible for Millions of Robocalls

Ryan J. Farrick — October 20, 2024

Phone with broken screen; image by Laura Rivera, via Unsplash.com.

Attorney General Josh Stein claims that a company called Club Exploria “[violated] telemarketing laws [by] routing more than 65 million calls to” to North Carolina phone numbers.

North Carolina has announced a lawsuit against a company suspected of using robocalls to hawk vacation rentals and timeshares to more than one million people across the state.

According to WECT, the complaint was filed Tuesday against Club Exploria, LLC.

In court documents, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein accuses Club Exploria of “unlawfully spamming more than one million North Carolinians trying to sell timeshares and vacation rentals.”

Stein specifically alleges that Exploria “[violated] telemarketing laws [by] routing more than 65 million calls to” to North Carolina phone numbers.

The lawsuit, only five pages long, describes Club Exploria’s practice of “using prerecorded voices to solicit business for itself.”

“Exploria used soundboard technology to make its unsolicited telephone calls,” the complaint alleges. “Soundboard technology allows a live telemarketer to communicate with a call recipient by playing prerecorded audio snippets instead of their own live voice.”

A gavel. Image via Wikimedia Commons via Flickr/user: Brian Turner. (CCA-BY-2.0).

“Exploria,” the lawsuit adds, “did not obtain the telephone subscriber’s prior express invitation or permission before making these calls. […] Moreover, the telephone calls misidentified the caller as ‘Helping Hands Association,’ and either did not mention ‘Exploria’ in the recording at all or, at most, mentioned ‘Exploria’ midway through the calls.”

The lawsuit alleges violations of multiple state laws, including prohibitions on the use of “automatic dialing and recorded message player[s] to make unsolicited phone calls” and statutes requiring that telephone solicitors clearly identify themselves at the beginning of phone calls.

“Club Exploria broke the law to bombard North Carolinians with robocalls,” Stein said in a press release. “That’s unacceptable, and I won’t tolerate robocallers breaking the law and taking North Carolinians’ hard-earned money.”

The Attorney General’s Office said that it had received more than a dozen complaints against Club Exploria’s business practices. It also continuing to litigate separate claims against Articul8, a phone company that purportedly routed overseas scam calls to North Carolina residents.

In the Articul8 lawsuit, Stein says that the scammers would misrepresent themselves as officials from the Social Security Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and local and state police departments.

“Articul8 and its owner looked the other way and allowed illegal robocalls onto our network where they confused and scared North Carolinians,” Stein said. “I’m pleased that we have put the owner out of business, and I’m asking the court to help us finish this case by shutting down Articul8.”

The Attorney General’s Office indicates that robocalls “have been the top complaint to the North Carolina Department of Justice each year of the two terms Attorney General Stein has been in office.”