The Federal Communications Commission is blaming a little-known VoIP provider for staging a robocall scam that uses PlayStation 5 orders as bait to trick consumers into responding.
On Tuesday, the FCC threatened to blacklist Montana-based VoIP provider SK Teleco for allegedly facilitating the robocall campaign on its network. The FCC cites data from an industry watchdog that traced 29 of the robocalls to SK Teleco.
The scam impersonates Walmart and claims someone has made an expensive PS5 order through the user’s account. The prerecorded robocalls usually feature someone saying: “A preauthorized purchase of PlayStation 5 special edition with Pulse 3D headset is being ordered from your Walmart account for an amount of 919 dollars 45 cents. To cancel your order or to connect with one of our customer support representatives, please press 1. Thank you.”
If victims pressed 1, they were connected to a live human operator. In some cases, those people impersonated a federal agency and phished for personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers, the FCC said.
Third-party robocall blocking service YouMail estimates that “nearly 8 million robocalls related to this campaign were placed to call recipients” between January and April, the FCC adds.
Although the Walmart-PS5 robocall scam can be traced back to 2023, “SK Teleco appears to have been the primary source of Walmart impersonation robocalls during the past year,” the FCC says. “If SK Teleco fails to take swift action to prevent scam calls, the FCC will require all other providers to no longer accept call traffic from SK Teleco.”
The agency is giving SK Teleco 48 hours to “effectively mitigate illegal traffic and 14 days to take steps to prevent a reoccurrence of such traffic on their network.”
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SK Teleco didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. It also ignored previous FCC inquiries and routed Walmart pre-authorized calls to another voice service provider “in an apparent attempt to avoid detection,” the commission says.
In August, a coalition of state prosecutors also sent warning letters to SK Teleco and 36 other voice providers that were found facilitating robocalls.
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. Earlier this year, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.
I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I’m now following how President Trump’s tariffs will affect the industry. I’m always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.
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