Uthmeier Proposes Florida Anti-Spam Communications Act With Mandatory Jail Time for Mass Robocall Operators

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has rolled out a legislative proposal aimed at fraudulent phone calls and text messages, a package he is calling the Florida Anti-Spam Communications Act. The proposal would carry mandatory jail time for people convicted of targeting large numbers of recipients and would impose new legal duties on telecommunications providers operating in the state.

Under the framework described by the attorney general's office, carriers would face requirements to authenticate caller identification, to respond to traceback requests from investigators, and to cut off service to entities identified as engaging in unlawful calling or texting. The proposal would also require that a consumer's STOP request sent by text message be honored within a short window measured in days.

The measure would need to pass both chambers of the Florida Legislature and be signed into law. Uthmeier is presenting it as part of a consumer protection agenda while also running for a full term as attorney general on the November 3 ballot, which places the proposal in both a policy and a campaign context.

What the proposal would do

The enforcement component is the most aggressive element. Mandatory minimum jail terms for mass unlawful calling and texting would move Florida from a framework built primarily on civil penalties and injunctions toward one that treats high-volume fraudulent communication as a criminal matter with a floor on punishment.

Caller ID authentication duties target the technical mechanism most scam operations depend on. Spoofing, in which a caller displays a false number, is what makes fraudulent calls appear to come from a local neighbor, a bank or a government agency. Industry standards known collectively as STIR and SHAKEN exist to cryptographically verify that a calling number is legitimately assigned to the caller, and federal regulators have required carriers to implement them, though coverage across small carriers and gateway providers has been uneven.

Traceback obligations address the investigative bottleneck. A fraudulent call typically passes through several carriers between origination and the recipient, and identifying the originating provider requires each intermediary to cooperate in tracing the call backward. Delays or refusals at any link can stall an investigation indefinitely.

The STOP request timing provision is the piece most consumers would notice directly. Federal rules already require that opt-out requests be honored, but the practical experience of many recipients is that texts continue after a STOP reply, either because the sender ignores it or because the message was never coming from a compliant sender to begin with.

The problem the bill addresses

Americans receive billions of unwanted calls and texts annually, and text-based fraud has grown faster than voice-based fraud over the past several years. The shift reflects cost and effectiveness: text messages are inexpensive to send at scale, they bypass call-blocking tools, and recipients read them at higher rates than they answer unknown calls.

Florida is an attractive target for a specific demographic reason. The state has one of the largest populations of residents over 65 in the country, and older adults are disproportionately victimized by phone and text fraud both in incidence and in dollar losses per incident. Fraud schemes built around Medicare, Social Security, grandchildren in distress and fake utility disconnection notices are tuned to that population.

Florida-specific fraud patterns compound the problem. Property insurance and roofing solicitation, hurricane recovery scams following storms, timeshare resale fraud and vacation package schemes all generate high call and text volume directed at Florida numbers, and some operate in the gray zone between aggressive marketing and outright fraud.

Financial losses are difficult to measure precisely because reporting rates are low, particularly among victims who are embarrassed or who do not realize a loss has occurred. Federal Trade Commission data consistently shows Florida among the states with the highest per-capita fraud report volumes.

What Florida law already provides

Florida is not starting from nothing. The state amended its Telephone Solicitation Act in 2021, creating a private right of action for recipients of certain automated calls and texts sent without express written consent. That change produced a substantial volume of litigation against businesses operating in Florida.

The Legislature narrowed the statute in 2023 after business groups argued the private right of action was generating suits against legitimate companies for routine marketing practices rather than against fraud operations. The amendments tightened the definition of an autodialed call and added a requirement that a recipient send a STOP message before suing over text messages.

That history is directly relevant to the new proposal. The 2021 statute attempted to address the problem through private civil litigation, and the 2023 narrowing reflected a judgment that the mechanism was hitting the wrong targets. Uthmeier's framework instead concentrates enforcement in criminal prosecution and in regulatory duties placed on carriers.

Federal law governs much of this space. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule and Federal Communications Commission regulations set nationwide requirements, and the FCC has fined gateway providers that carried large volumes of fraudulent traffic. State law operates alongside that framework rather than replacing it.

The enforcement problem

The structural obstacle to any anti-spam law is jurisdiction. A large share of fraudulent calls and texts reaching Florida phones originate outside the United States, routed through internet-based providers that hand traffic to domestic carriers at gateway points. A Florida criminal statute has no reach over an operation run from another country.

That is precisely why the carrier obligations matter more than the criminal penalties in practical terms. If a state can require providers operating within it to authenticate, trace and terminate suspect traffic, it addresses the chokepoint that fraudulent traffic must pass through regardless of where it originated. The criminal provisions reach domestic operators and the people who set up domestic shell entities.

Enforcement capacity is a separate question. Prosecuting a telecommunications fraud case requires technical investigation, subpoenas to multiple carriers and often cooperation from federal agencies. Mandatory minimum sentences do not by themselves increase the number of cases investigators can build.

Telecommunications providers are likely to raise cost and preemption arguments. Carriers have generally argued that state-by-state technical mandates create compliance complexity in a network that does not respect state boundaries, and that federal regulation should set uniform requirements.

Where it fits in Uthmeier's record

Uthmeier has been publicly active through September on multiple fronts. He appeared with Gov. Ron DeSantis in Palm Beach County to announce the arrest of 20 people on voter fraud allegations, and he has announced a lawsuit against insulin manufacturers over alleged price fixing.

He has also highlighted enforcement results on drug trafficking, announcing arrests in a Washington County methamphetamine case that officials described as possibly the largest such operation in that county's history, and stating that fentanyl cases in Florida have declined substantially over the past year and a half.

The office was also involved in a multiagency operation that recovered 163 missing children, work that spanned several jurisdictions. Taken together, the September activity sketches a portfolio spanning consumer protection, election enforcement, narcotics and child safety.

Uthmeier is on the November 3 ballot seeking a full term. The attorney general's race sits below the governor's contest between Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly, and recent polling has shown Republicans holding double-digit leads at the top of the Florida ballot.

What Floridians can do now

The most effective protection available to consumers does not depend on legislation. Carriers offer free call-blocking and scam-labeling services, and both major mobile operating systems include settings that silence calls from unknown numbers and route them to voicemail.

The central behavioral rule is that no legitimate organization requires immediate payment by gift card, cryptocurrency, wire transfer or payment app. Any communication that creates urgency and specifies one of those payment methods is fraudulent regardless of how convincing the caller identification appears.

Responding to unwanted texts carries a tradeoff. Replying STOP to a legitimate marketer stops the messages and, under the 2023 amendments to Florida law, is a prerequisite to a private suit. Replying to an outright scam confirms the number is active and generally increases volume, which argues for deleting and reporting instead.

Floridians can report fraud to the attorney general's office and to the Federal Trade Commission. Those reports build the case files that enforcement actions rest on, and low reporting rates are among the main reasons operations continue.

Consumers should also be aware that the most damaging schemes now arrive by text rather than by voice. Messages impersonating toll authorities, package carriers, banks and state agencies have proliferated because they cost almost nothing to send and because a short link is easier to click than a phone call is to answer. Florida drivers in particular have been targeted by fake unpaid toll notices referencing the state's electronic tolling systems.

No state agency requests payment by text message link. A resident who receives one and is uncertain should navigate independently to the agency's official website rather than following any link in the message.

What is next

The Florida Legislature convenes in 2027, and the proposal will need a House sponsor and a Senate sponsor before it becomes a bill with a number and a committee path. Legislative proposals announced by statewide officials in the fall typically surface in filed form in the weeks before session.

Committee hearings will be where the substance is tested. Telecommunications carriers, business groups concerned about marketing compliance, consumer advocates and prosecutors will all have positions, and the mandatory minimum sentencing provision is the element most likely to draw scrutiny from lawmakers wary of sentencing floors.

The November election intervenes first. The composition of the Legislature and the identity of the attorney general in January will shape whether this specific framework advances or whether a successor proposal takes its place.

For Florida households, the proposal would not change anything immediately even if enacted. Statutory effective dates, carrier implementation timelines and enforcement ramp-up mean the practical effect of a law passed in 2027 would arrive in 2028 at the earliest.