In this proposed system, consumers can report robo calls directly to the phone companies by dialing a certain code after receiving a robo call. The data from consumers will be analyzed by the phone companies, and a blacklist will be formed, of those phone numbers found to be associated with illegal robo calls. Thereafter, calls from these phone numbers will not be sent through to consumers, but will instead be routed to the FTC. The FTC can monitor the calls, or answer them, posing as "customers", and make purchases using credit cards. The credit transactions can be traced to determine the merchants at the other end, who receive the payments. At this point, the credit card companies can blacklist these merchants and refuse to process payments for them.
If necessary, robo calls may be allowed to go through to consumers for a few seconds, until a definite match can be made against a known set of robo-call recordings, but the call will be cut off as soon as a definite match is determined. This will happen regardless of whether the consumer has signed up for the Do-Not-Call list. This will prevent scammers from making sales off their robo calls.
Additionally, FTC agents can set up phone numbers to act as "honeypots", and similarly handle illegal robo calls, by making purchases and then tracing the credit transactions to the merchants.
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