Members of the Missouri House took action this week to protect vulnerable Missourians from predatory callers who hid their identities. The bill House Bill 242 would establish the “Caller ID Anti-Spoofing Act.”
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Spoofing is when a caller deliberately falsifies the information transmitted to caller ID display to disguise their identity. Scammers often use neighbor spoofing so it appears that an incoming call is coming from a local number, or spoof a number from a company or a government agency the individual they are calling may already know and trust. Spoofers use scam scripts to try to steal money or valuable personal information, which can be used in fraudulent activity.
“It’s the vulnerable adults who I am worried about more than anything else. They think they get a phone call from maybe their son, and it’s not, and they pick up and they go down some kind of tale of misfortune and then try to get some personal information from them and all of a sudden it leads into some financial information, or dollars being sent to these people,” said the bill’s sponsor.
The bill would create the offense of caller identification spoofing. An individual commits the offense of caller identification spoofing if he or she enters or causes to be entered false information into a caller ID service with the intent to deceive, defraud, or mislead the recipient of the call to obtain anything of value. It would also be a crime if the person places a call knowing that false information was entered into a caller ID service with the intent to deceive, defraud, or mislead the recipient of the call. The offense is a class E felony.
Any victim of call spoofing would have standing to recover punitive damages against the caller in an amount up to $5,000 per call. Additionally, the Attorney General would be empowered to initiate legal proceedings or intervene in legal proceedings on behalf of victims. The bill now moves to the Senate for consideration.