The U.S. Department of Justice announced that Idaho and Montana resident Scott Rhodes was fined $9.9 million for conducting thousands of "illegal and malicious" robocalls, or automated phone calls, with disturbing pre-recorded messages across the U.S., BleepingComputer reports.
Rhodes was also issued an injunction against future Truth in Caller ID Act and Telephone Consumer Protection Act violations on top of the monetary penalty.
Aside from targeting hundreds of murder-themed calls aimed at the residents of the City of Brooklyn in Iowa, Rhodes also deployed more than 2,000 robocalls regarding hate crime perpetrator James Alex Fields Jr. against residents of the City of Charlottesville in Virginia.
Such a development comes months after an international network of companies had been subjected to a record-high $300 million penalty for conducting more than five billion robocalls and more than two years after penalties of $45 million had been pushed by the Federal Communications Commission for a health insurance robocaller.
