State Senator Brad Hoylman (Photo by Maria Rocha-Buschel)
By Sabina Mollot
Just call him Robo-call Cop.
Like any other New Yorker, State Senator Brad Hoylman has come to view his phone with a sense of dread each time it rings thanks to near-daily scam calls.
Popular ones to hit local communities lately include the Apple iCloud shutoff scam and another claiming money is owed to Con Ed.
In Hoylman’s case, the Greenwich Village resident said it’s recently been a steady mix of callers instructing him to call back about his credit card account, announcements that he’s won a free cruise (complete with a louder than necessary cruise ship horn blast) and messages in Chinese. The Chinese language calls come from numbers that appear to be local with 212, 917 and 646 area codes.
But, said Hoylman, “Those are spoofed calls made overseas.”
To combat the scam scourge, the senator has proposed legislation that would require phone companies to offer consumers tools, free of charge, on landlines as well as cell phones, to block or divert robocalls.
