After being formally warned by the FCC’s own watchdog group that its platform was blasting illegal calls into Americans’ phones, Stratics Networks let its biggest client send 23 million more of them.

The Machine Behind Your Missed Voicemail

You’ve gotten one of these messages. Your phone doesn’t ring. You’re not given a chance to answer or block the call. You just open your voicemail one day and there’s a stranger’s voice telling you that you’ve been pre-approved for a debt hardship program that will get you out of credit card debt in 24 months or less. It sounds official. It sounds helpful. It was neither.

The technology that put that message in your voicemail is called a Ringless Voicemail, or RVM. Stratics Networks, a Canadian company operating throughout the United States, advertised itself online as the “U.S. Inventor of Ringless Voicemail & Unlimited Ringless Voicemail Drops.” It built a platform that allowed anyone paying for access to upload a prerecorded message, a list of phone numbers, and a spoofed caller ID, and then fire those messages into millions of voicemail boxes simultaneously, without any notification, warning, or opportunity for the recipient to refuse.

The FTC and the U.S. Department of Justice allege this platform powered a sprawling, multi-company scheme designed to harvest money from people who were already struggling with debt. The DOJ named 10 defendants in a February 2023 federal complaint: telecom companies, debt relief companies, marketing companies, a subcontractor, and the individual executives who ran all of them.

The Corporate Web: Who Did What

This scheme relied on an assembly line of companies, each playing a specific role in extracting money from financially vulnerable Americans. Understanding who is who is essential to understanding how the con worked.

Petersen and DiRoberto ran Atlas Marketing, Atlas Investment, and Provident Solutions as a single common enterprise. The DOJ alleges they are jointly and severally liable for every violation committed across all three entities.

The numbers above represent only the documented illegal calls in this complaint. The actual total volume of Stratics Networks’ illegal robocall output across all its customers across all years of operation is almost certainly far larger. This chart represents a lower bound, not a ceiling.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Measure

They Targeted the Most Financially Vulnerable People in America

These calls didn’t reach random consumers. They reached people struggling with credit card debt. People who were already behind, already stressed, already searching for a lifeline. The robocall scripts were carefully calibrated to sound like a follow-up to an earlier conversation, like an official government program, like something the recipient had already qualified for. “Hi, this is Sara. I’m following up on an offer we sent regarding your eligibility for our new 2020 debt relief program.” There was no previous offer. There was no government program. Sara was a prerecorded voice belonging to Kenan Azzeh’s wife, uploaded to a server in Canada and fired into millions of voicemail boxes by a machine.

The psychological damage of this kind of targeting is real and specific. Financial stress is one of the leading causes of anxiety, depression, and relationship breakdown in the United States. When a company deliberately hunts for people at their most financially desperate and then feeds them false hope, that is an act of deliberate predation. These weren’t accidental misrepresentations. The complaint documents that Eric Petersen, one of the scheme’s co-owners, admitted in an FTC investigational hearing that the company knew from experience that most consumers would not be out of credit card debt within 24 months. They kept making the promise anyway.

Consumers who called back the robocall number were greeted by live agents who refused to identify the company they worked for. Instead, they called themselves “Consumer Services.” The complaint explains this was a deliberate strategy: Atlas Investment’s telemarketers used the name “Consumer Services” as a buffer to avoid revealing and tainting the actual business. Only after a consumer committed to signing up were they told the company was called “Provident Solutions.” By that point, the company already had their bank account and routing numbers.

The Bait-and-Switch on Monthly Payments Was Systematic

During the sales call, consumers were told that some of their monthly payment would go toward paying down their actual debts. This was a lie. During the subsequent “quality control” call, a different agent from Ace Business Solutions would ask consumers to confirm they understood their monthly payments were for fees only. The complaint describes this two-step deception as causing “consumer confusion” in numerous instances. That is a bureaucratic way of saying that people handed over their banking information because they believed they were starting to pay off what they owed, and then discovered the money was going to corporate fees instead.

Ace Business Solutions withdrew money from consumers’ bank accounts within 30 days of enrollment, before performing any services at all. In many cases, no debt validation letter had even been sent yet. In many more cases, the company continued collecting monthly fees for months on end despite never renegotiating, settling, reducing, or otherwise altering the terms of a single consumer’s debt. The complaint states plainly that most of the Atlas Defendants’ customers did not complete the program, and many filed for bankruptcy. The program that was supposed to rescue people from debt sent them into deeper financial ruin.

Your Personal Banking Information Was Collected by People Who Lied to Get It

The live telemarketers at Atlas Investment instructed consumers to provide bank account and routing numbers over the phone as part of the enrollment process. This was presented as routine. What consumers were not told is that the identity of the company they were enrolling with was deliberately hidden from them at the time of that conversation. The people on the phone called themselves “Consumer Services.” The debt validation letters, if they were ever sent, came from a separate Nevada company called Ace Business Solutions that many consumers had never heard of. The people collecting the payments were operating under a legal fiction designed to obscure accountability.

The complaint confirms that Todd DiRoberto, one of the two co-owners of the entire operation, had previously been involved in federal TSR enforcement litigation, specifically United States v. Dish Network. He knew exactly what the law required. He ran this scheme anyway. Both Petersen and DiRoberto received and reviewed consumer complaints alleging violations of federal telemarketing law. They engaged telemarketing compliance legal counsel. They had documentation of the complaints. None of it stopped them from continuing to fire millions of robocalls at people on the Do Not Call Registry and charging them money for services that were never delivered.

Legal Receipts: What the Documents Actually Say

The federal complaint is dense, but these passages cut through. Each one is taken directly from the source document.

“Hi, this is Sara. I’m following up on an offer we sent regarding your eligibility for our new 2020 debt relief program. This program has affordable repayment options and, in most cases, can have you out of credit card debt in 24 months or less. You can reach me at 855-914-2203.” — Verbatim transcript of Atlas Defendants’ ringless voicemail robocall, DOJ Complaint Paragraph 66. “Sara” was a prerecorded voice. The offer was fabricated. The 24-month promise was knowingly false.

“The Atlas Defendants knew from experience that most consumers would not be out of credit card debt within 24 months or less, and Petersen has admitted as much in an FTC investigational hearing.” — DOJ Complaint, Paragraph 82. Co-owner Eric Petersen acknowledged, under oath, that the program’s core sales promise was a lie.

“Atlas Investment’s telemarketers used the name ‘Consumer Services’ as a buffer to avoid revealing and tainting the actual business.” — DOJ Complaint, Paragraph 72. The company deliberately hid its identity from the consumers it was signing up for a program that required handing over bank account numbers.

“Notwithstanding Stratics Networks’ representation to US Telecom’s ITG in response to a April 29, 2020 traceback request that it ‘ha[d] taken immediate action and triggered a full investigation’ into the Traceback Request and ‘also suspended traffic,’ Stratics Networks permitted Atlas Marketing to continue using its RVM platform service to deliver millions more robocalls for over five more months.” — DOJ Complaint, Paragraph 105. Stratics Networks lied to the FCC-designated anti-robocall watchdog and kept the illegal operation running.

“Hey, it’s Kyla with processing. I was just calling to let you know that we do have your pre-approved amount for the hardship program. Um…it is up to $55,000, so just give me a call and we can go over the details.” — Verbatim transcript of a Netlatitude-routed robocall, April 9, 2020, DOJ Complaint Paragraph 114. No “pre-approval” existed. No hardship program of $55,000 ($55,000, roughly what a typical American worker earns in a full year of labor) was waiting. The calls targeted people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In some instances, even when Stratics Networks did identify the RVM customers responsible for these illegal robocalls, Stratics Networks allowed these RVM customers to open additional accounts and/or continue utilizing its RVM platform service for several weeks or months without suspending or terminating their RVM accounts.” — DOJ Complaint, Paragraph 101. The platform didn’t just fail to stop illegal use. It actively allowed caught violators to create new accounts and keep going.

Societal Impact: Who Pays the Real Price

Public Health: Financial Predation Causes Documented Psychological Harm

The American Psychological Association has documented for years that financial stress is among the most prevalent sources of anxiety in the United States. When a company deliberately targets people who are already drowning in credit card debt, it isn’t selling into a neutral market. It is predating on a population that is already experiencing heightened psychological vulnerability. The complaint documents that consumers were charged between $6,000 and $8,000 ($6,000–$8,000, roughly six months of groceries for an average family of four) over 36 to 48 months for a service that, in the majority of cases, did not reduce their debt at all.

The complaint states directly that most of the Atlas Defendants’ customers did not complete the program, and many filed for bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is not a neutral administrative outcome. It is a years-long process that damages credit scores, restricts access to housing and employment, and carries lasting social stigma. These were people who entered the Provident Solutions program hoping to rebuild their financial lives. Many emerged worse off, with less money, more debt, and a bankruptcy filing attached to their name.

The Netlatitude-routed robocalls specifically targeted consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic, in April 2020, with messaging about “hardship programs” and “pre-approved amounts.” Targeting financially desperate people during a public health emergency and offering them fraudulent financial lifelines is a specific and deliberate harm to an already-stressed population. The complaint documents these calls were routed by a foreign telemarketer, Fortress Leads, entering the U.S. phone network through Netlatitude as the U.S. Point of Entry.

Economic Inequality: This Scheme Was Designed to Climb Upward

Debt relief scams do not target the wealthy. They target people with credit card debt, people living paycheck to paycheck, people who cannot easily absorb the loss of $6,000 to $8,000 in fees for services never rendered. The complaint’s description of the enrollment process makes this explicit: Atlas Investment’s telemarketers interviewed consumers about their debt to determine how much they could afford to pay per month. The company calibrated its extraction to the exact edge of what each individual consumer could handle financially, then automated the withdrawal of that amount from their bank accounts.

This is wealth transfer at industrial scale. Consumers who enrolled in the program handed over bank routing numbers believing some portion of their payments would reduce their credit card balances. The “quality control” call from Ace Business Solutions then clarified, often confusingly, that the payments were fees only. The money flowed from financially struggling consumers upward to Ace, which then distributed a percentage back to the Atlas Defendants. At the top sat Petersen and DiRoberto, collecting revenue from a program that their own co-owner admitted under oath did not deliver what it promised.

The individual fine per TSR violation is up to $46,517 ($46,517, enough to cover a year of rent for one family in many U.S. cities). With over 23 million documented calls in just one campaign period, the potential civil penalties in this case run into the trillions on paper, though real recoveries rarely approach theoretical maximums. The structural gap between the penalty that could theoretically apply and the amount companies typically pay is itself a feature of a regulatory system that corporate operations have learned to navigate without fundamentally altering their behavior.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now: The People Responsible and What You Can Do

Named Executives Still Active at Time of Filing

You can find a press release on this from the FTC’s website

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