FTC, FCC Among 11 Public Agencies Worldwide To Share Intelligence on Spam, Robocalls

in a Tuesday news release. The other signatories -- which are all part of the London Action Plan, a global network of public agencies and private sector representatives that fight spam and unsolicited calls -- come from Australia, Canada, Korea, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the U.K. In the release, the FTC and Florida attorney general's office also said the U.S. District Court in Orlando issued a temporary restraining order against several defendants, collectively known as Life Management Services of Orange County, preventing them from making illegal robocalls. The agencies said the defendants have bilked consumers out of more than $15.6 million since at least January 2013. The operation also will be prevented from selling bogus credit-card interest rate reduction and debt relief services pending an upcoming hearing, said the commission, which voted 3-0 to issue the complaint. The court unsealed the temporary restraining order Monday, four days after it was granted, the release said. Defendants claimed they would work with consumers' credit card companies or banks to reduce credit card interest rates, allowing consumers to pay off balances "three- to five-times faster," but consumers first had to pony up between $500 to $5,000 to Life Management Services, the release said. While the defendants sometimes tried to contact credit card companies, they "were almost never able to obtain the promised rates or savings," the agencies said. The defendants also promised consumers they could eliminate credit card debt by accessing a government fund -- which doesn't exist -- but required consumers to pay $2,500 to $20,000 up front, the release said. We got no reply to a message seeking comment that was left through a phone number that the Central Florida Better Business Bureau's website associated with Life Management.