Phone scams tackled by law: Providers to block suspicious calls, with fines of up to 75,000 lei

Electronic communications operators will be required to identify and block suspicious calls, in an attempt to combat the wave of phone scams and fraud committed through fake or unverifiable numbers. In its first reading, Parliament voted on a draft law aimed at preventing phone scams and fraud through electronic communications.

The legislative initiative stipulates that providers of electronic communications networks and services will be obliged to implement technical and organizational measures for detecting, verifying, marking, filtering, limiting, and blocking suspicious calls.

Calls initiated from outside the Republic of Moldova but displaying numbers from the National Numbering Plan will also be subject to additional verification and may, where appropriate, be marked or blocked, in accordance with the rules established by the National Agency for Communications Regulation.

The bill also introduces stricter rules for the use of prepaid SIM cards. These will only be activated on the basis of an identity document, and services associated with numbers whose users are not identified within the timeframe set by the regulatory authority will be suspended.

“Phone scams have become increasingly frequent and sophisticated. People are called by individuals posing as employees of commercial banks, the Police, or the Intelligence and Security Service. The victim sees a number on the screen that appears credible and believes they are speaking with an official. Through psychological pressure or deception, the citizen is induced to provide data, make transfers, or hand over money. Most often, the victims are elderly or otherwise vulnerable individuals. Today, the state often reacts too late, after the money has already disappeared. The proposed bill changes this logic — preventing fraud before it occurs,” said Constantin Cuimju, MP from the “Our Party” faction, one of the co-authors of the bill.

“Mobile phone companies have blocked almost one million calls that attempted to enter the country. We cannot say that nothing has been done. Here, everyone believes that life started with them. Indeed, this bill will solve certain problems. It also concerns false bomb alerts, not just the scams we are currently facing. To protect citizens from phone scams and fraud committed through fake or unverifiable calls, the authors propose obliging providers of public networks and electronic communications services that ensure the initiation, transit, or termination of calls to implement technical and organizational measures to detect, verify, mark, filter, limit, and block suspicious calls,” said Lilian Carp, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Security, Defense and Public Order, while presenting the committee’s co-report in the plenary session.

Carp specified that two draft laws on this subject have been examined and will be merged for the second reading. The document provides for significant penalties for violating the new rules. Providers that fail to implement measures to combat fraudulent calls risk fines of up to 75,000 lei. The same penalty is provided for non-compliance with the obligation to identify users of prepaid SIM cards.

At the same time, the sale, distribution, or activation of SIM cards without identifying the user will be punishable by fines of up to 50,000 lei for individuals and up to 75,000 lei for legal entities. The bill also introduces fines of up to 75,000 lei, as well as the possibility of banning an activity for up to one year, for the use of equipment that enables the unauthorized substitution of the caller ID, such as SIM box devices, GSM gateways, or other similar equipment frequently used in phone fraud.

According to the authors of the bill, the changes are necessary in the context of the alarming increase in the number of phone scams, in which criminals use spoofed numbers and calls of unverifiable origin to deceive citizens.

For the second reading, the bill is to be merged with a legislative initiative drafted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which also provides that prepaid SIM cards may only be activated after the user is identified based on an identity document.