This bill amends 47 U.S.C. 227 (the TCPA) to create federal criminal liability for willful and knowing violations of the statute and to raise statutory penalties for providing inaccurate caller identification information. Rather than relying solely on civil actions and FCC enforcement, the bill authorizes imprisonment—up to 1 year for ordinary willful violations and up to 3 years for aggravated offenses—and increases maximum statutory fines for spoofing from $10,000 to $20,000 in the two provisions that now set that cap.
The measure matters because it transforms certain TCPA breaches from a primarily civil compliance risk into a criminal one, clarifies that texts and messages sent to North American Numbering Plan numbers fall within the statute’s scope, and sets concrete numeric thresholds that trigger aggravated criminal exposure. Compliance teams, telemarketing vendors, SMS aggregators, and prosecutors will face new evidentiary and operational questions if this language becomes law.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill inserts a new subsection (k) into 47 U.S.C. 227 creating criminal penalties for willful and knowing TCPA violations, with a higher sentence for repeat or high-volume offenders and certain aggravating circumstances. It also amends existing caller ID provisions to double the per-violation statutory maximum fines for inaccurate caller identification.
Who It Affects
Companies that initiate automated calls or texts (telemarketers, call centers, SMS aggregators, VoIP providers), providers of caller ID/spoofing tools, and federal and state prosecutors assigned to telecom fraud and consumer-protection cases. It also affects entities that contract with cloud-based dialing platforms and third-party campaign managers.
Why It Matters
By adding criminal exposure and explicit numeric thresholds, the bill raises the stakes for operational compliance, evidence retention, and vendor oversight—changing how legal and compliance teams assess risk and prompting adjustments in vendor contracting and call-volume controls.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill amends the Communications Act to add criminal penalties to the TCPA. It creates a new subsection that makes it a federal crime to willfully and knowingly violate the TCPA, punishable by up to one year in prison, a fine under Title 18, or both.
The statute then defines an aggravated offense that raises the maximum prison term to three years where certain conditions are met.
Those aggravated conditions are four-fold: a prior conviction under the new criminal subsection; initiating extremely large numbers of calls within defined time windows (100,000 calls in 24 hours; 1,000,000 calls in 30 days; 10,000,000 calls in a year); committing the TCPA violation with the intent to use the calls to further a felony or conspiracy to commit a felony; or causing aggregate losses to one or more persons of $5,000 or more in a one-year period. The bill also expands the statutory definition of 'call' to explicitly include messages sent to any North American Numbering Plan number (including emergency numbers), and it brings text messages sent by an automatic telephone dialing system within that definition.In parallel, the bill raises statutory maximums tied to inaccurate caller identification (commonly called spoofing) by replacing $10,000 caps with $20,000 caps in the two subparagraphs that currently set those figures.
It also makes a technical conforming edit pointing one existing enforcement cross-reference to the new criminal subsection.Taken together, these changes broaden the TCPA’s reach (explicitly covering certain texts and emergency numbers), increase criminal and monetary exposure for high-volume or malicious actors, and create new evidentiary pressures—prosecutors must establish willfulness and, for aggravated cases, show there was either the requisite call volume, prior conviction, felony intent, or $5,000 aggregate loss. That will push providers and marketers to tighten vendor controls, preserve detailed logs, and reconsider large-scale automated messaging practices.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill creates a new criminal subsection in 47 U.S.C. 227 making willful and knowing TCPA violations punishable by up to 1 year in prison, a fine, or both.
An aggravated offense raises the jail term to up to 3 years if the defendant has a prior TCPA conviction, initiated 100,000 calls in 24 hours, 1,000,000 calls in 30 days, or 10,000,000 calls in a year, acted to further a felony, or caused $5,000+ aggregate loss in a year.
The statutory definition of 'call' is expanded to include messages sent to any North American Numbering Plan number (including emergency numbers) and expressly covers text messages sent by an automatic telephone dialing system.
The bill doubles the dollar cap for inaccurate caller identification penalties from $10,000 to $20,000 where the existing statute sets that maximum in two subparagraphs.
The measure includes a technical conforming change redirecting an existing enforcement cross-reference to the new criminal subsection (k).
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Short title: 'DO NOT Call Act'
This single-line provision gives the bill its public name—'Deter Obnoxious, Nefarious, and Outrageous Telephone Calls Act of 2025' or 'DO NOT Call Act'—so references in other statutes and rulemaking will use that shorthand. The short title has no operational effect but signals legislative framing and intent for regulators and courts reviewing legislative history.
Creates criminal liability for willful and knowing TCPA violations, with aggravated-offense criteria
This is the bill’s core substantive change: it adds subsection (k) to 47 U.S.C. 227 making willful and knowing breaches a federal crime. The ordinary offense carries up to one year of imprisonment; the aggravated-offense provision raises the cap to three years where one of four discrete aggravators exists. Practically, that converts certain enforcement actions from civil or administrative processes (FCC fines and private suits) into matters for criminal prosecutors when willfulness is shown. The provision defines 'call' and 'initiate' for purposes of proving criminal conduct, which shapes how evidence—call logs, vendor records, server timestamps—must be preserved and presented in court.
Quantitative and qualitative triggers for enhanced penalties
The bill sets explicit numeric thresholds that, if crossed, permit prosecutors to pursue the higher three-year sentence: 100,000 calls in 24 hours; 1,000,000 calls in 30 days; or 10,000,000 calls in a year. It also allows enhanced sentencing for repeat offenders, for operators who used calls to further a felony, or where calls caused at least $5,000 aggregate loss to one or more victims in a year. Those trigger rules shift the enforcement calculus from subjective assessments of harm to measurable volume or loss metrics—but they also raise evidentiary questions about how to attribute calls across intermediaries and how to calculate 'loss' in dispersed scam schemes.
Expands 'call' and defines 'initiate' to include texts and NANP numbers
For the criminal subsection only, the bill defines 'call' to include communications to any North American Numbering Plan number, explicitly encompassing emergency numbers and text messages sent via an automatic telephone dialing system. It also defines 'initiate' to include sending, making, or transmitting the call. Those definitions matter because they extend criminal exposure to SMS campaigns and clarify that emergency numbers fall inside the statute's scope for criminal liability—details that vendors and compliance officers must weigh when designing blast-messaging and emergency-alert systems.
Updates an internal statutory cross-reference
This small change amends an internal citation in 47 U.S.C. 227(e)(5)(B) to refer to the new criminal subsection (k). It prevents misalignment in the statute once the criminal text is in place and has practical impact because other parts of the statute rely on precise cross-references when describing enforcement options and penalties.
Doubles maximum statutory fines for inaccurate caller identification
The bill amends two places in section 227(e)(5) where the statute currently sets a $10,000 cap for penalties tied to providing inaccurate caller ID information, raising those caps to $20,000. This increases the civil monetary exposure in spoofing cases where the statute sets that cap and may influence FCC settlement positions and private plaintiffs’ damage demands, even though it does not convert those civil provisions into criminal ones.
This bill is one of many.
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Explore Privacy in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Consumers and scam victims — They gain stronger deterrence tools: criminal penalties and higher statutory fines increase the legal consequences for malicious robocallers and spoofers, potentially reducing the incidence of scams and unwanted automated contacts.
- Federal and state prosecutors — Prosecutors acquire a statutory criminal offense tailored to willful TCPA violations and clear aggravated-offense triggers that can support felony-level prosecutions against high-volume or repeat bad actors.
- Consumer-protection NGOs and victim-advocacy groups — Stronger penalties provide leverage in policy advocacy and litigation strategy and may improve settlement leverage when representing harmed consumers.
Who Bears the Cost
- Telemarketers, call centers, and political/charitable outreach operations — These groups face heightened criminal risk for willful violations and must invest more in compliance, consent-tracking, and vendor oversight to avoid exposure to imprisonment for managers or operators.
- VoIP providers, SMS aggregators, and cloud-dialing vendors — Providers that facilitate high-volume dialing will need stricter contractual controls, logging, and identity verification systems to demonstrate lack of willfulness and to prevent being treated as the initiating party.
- Small businesses using automated outreach — Even lawful, small-volume uses may require stricter recordkeeping and vendor audits to avoid inadvertent exposure; the compliance burden and legal costs will fall disproportionately on smaller operators with fewer legal resources.
- Courts and prosecutors — Criminalizing TCPA breaches will increase investigative and prosecutorial workload (evidence collection, attribution analysis, proving intent), potentially straining resources or leading to prioritization decisions that affect case selection.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is deterrence versus over-criminalization: the bill aims to deter large-scale, malicious robocall schemes by adding criminal penalties and bright-line volume triggers, but doing so risks criminalizing operational errors and imposing heavy compliance costs—especially on small actors and intermediaries—unless prosecutors apply strict willfulness standards and courts carefully parse attribution across complex call-delivery chains.
The bill raises practical and doctrinal questions. First, criminal liability hinges on proving a defendant 'willfully and knowingly' violated the TCPA—a higher standard than many civil cases.
That will protect some actors who made mistakes or relied on vendor representations, but it also imposes a heavy evidentiary burden on prosecutors who must prove state of mind beyond reasonable doubt. Second, measuring the numeric thresholds for aggravated offenses across complex supply chains is difficult: cloud dialers, reseller relationships, and international traffic flows complicate attempts to attribute 'initiated' calls to a single person or entity.
Prosecutors will have to untangle whether the alleged defendant truly initiated the traffic or merely provided ancillary services.
Third, the statutory definition expansion to include texts, emergency numbers, and a broad definition of 'call' creates ambiguity around legitimate emergency messaging and automated alerts. Including emergency numbers within the criminal definition could create edge cases where emergency-notification providers face criminal exposure for false positives or technical misdeliveries.
Finally, the bill increases monetary caps for spoofing penalties but leaves open how civil and criminal enforcement will be coordinated; dual exposure to FCC civil penalties and criminal prosecutions raises separation-of-powers and double-litigation concerns and will require guidance on prosecutorial discretion and administrative coordination.
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