The New Hampshire District Attorney’s Office launched a criminal probe into two North Texas companies this week for their alleged parts in a slew of fake ‘Biden’ robocalls.
Attorney General John Formella addressed the press on Tuesday about his office’s investigation into approximately 25,000 robocalls received in New Hampshire allegedly impersonating President Joe Biden and targeting Democrats, according to CBS News Texas. Imitating Biden’s voice using an artificial intelligence tool from ElevenLabs, these robocalls reportedly told recipients not to vote for him in the state’s primary, which was held two days later.
“Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again. Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday,” the call said, per CBS News Texas.
Formella told reporters that the robocalls were traced to the Arlington-based Life Corporation, whose owner Walter Monk was allegedly the source, and the Dallas-based Lingo Telecom, which was allegedly the voice service provider.
Cease-and-desist letters, document preservation requests, and subpoenas were sent to the two entities, both of which have received illegal robocall warnings from the Federal Communications Commission in the past.
The investigation is still ongoing and could result in charges of voter suppression — a Class B state felony — for the perpetrators. A conviction is punishable by up to seven years in prison but is typically associated with a $4,000 fine and up to 5 years on probation.
While the incident does raise the issue of how AI-generated deep fakes could be used to sway voters, Formella explained how it served as a lesson for his and other state AG offices. All 50 AGs aided in the recent criminal probe in a joint initiative called the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force.
“We’ve learned a lot in the last two weeks even, and we have done a lot of work to identify the resources available to us to track these calls,” he said, according to New Hampshire Bulletin. “We think if this happens again, we’ll be able to track the calls faster and respond even faster.”
In Dallas, which recently landed in the top three for recipients of robocalls, a total of 196 reports of fraud were made this year as of February 6, according to the City’s crime analytics dashboard. The vast majority of these were false pretenses, swindling, and confidence game offenses.
