BATON ROUGE — Louisiana's attorney general, along with 48 others, want the Federal Communications Commission to adopt rules that would cut off scammers' access to legitimate phone numbers. 

Previously, scammers would illegally "spoof" the numbers of real people and businesses to make the call look legitimate. However, a crackdown on spoofing has led scammers to purchase real phone numbers. 

The Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force asked the FCC to address this issue in 2021; members are now responding to the FCC's proposed rules. 

Liz Murrill of Louisiana is among 49 attorneys general who signed a letter asking the FCC to require that companies authorized to purchase and resell phone numbers meet stronger requirements regarding how and to whom numbers are shared. They also say the companies that buy the numbers should share data with law enforcement so investigators can trace the numbers, prohibit number cycling and use other means to reduce the risk from scammers. 

According to a press release from Murrill's office, Americans received about 29.6 billion scam calls and texts last year, losing nearly $2 billion as a result. In a case in North Carolina, scammers made more than 17.3 million calls in a day through one phone company, Murrill said. 

"We need to make it harder for scammers to exploit legitimate phone numbers and easier for law enforcement to trace these scams back to the source," Murrill said.