Unwanted Telemarketers Face Bigger Fines Under Senate-Passed Bills

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 01/29/2026) Telemarketers peddling for-profit products to those on the federal do-not-call list with a fake phone number, a pre-recorded caller and no established consumer-business relationship face as much as a $75,000 civil fine under five bills that passed the Senate unanimously on Thursday.

Crafted in partnership with Attorney General Dana Nessel, the bills replace the 1980 rules on telephone solicitation with The Telephone Solicitation Act (SB 351) that allows private citizens bothered by these unwanted calls to file their own suit for damages.

The package, which also includes SB 352, SB 353, SB 354 and SB 355, creates a carve out for charitable, education-based, political and polling calls, but mandates that even those calls must be made by live people with supervisors that are representing outfits that keep regular business hours.

Sen. Mary Cavanagh (D-Redford Twp.) and her fellow co-sponsors said the bipartisan bills are designed to stop the “incredibly annoying” and “exploitative” robocalls that, in many cases, are used to scam vulnerable people of their money.

"The deceptive solicitation tactics flooding our phones throughout the year aren't just downright annoying — they're dangerous, posing real threats to our personal and financial information, costing both time and money,” said Sen. Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing).

According to the Michigan Poverty Law Program (MPLP) in October, when the bills received testimony in the Senate Finance, Insurance and Consumer Protection Committee, which Cavanagh chairs, the five-bill package “comes at a critical time.” It noted how in 2024, the Federal Trade Commission reported a 25 percent increase in fraud-related consumer losses, receiving 53,351 fraud complaints from Michigan consumers.

With $204 million reportedly stolen from Michiganders due to fraud, the MPLP underscored how most of the money was lost to investment and impostor scams, both commonly beginning with unsolicited phone calls.

“Moreover, the FTC has warned that the emerging use of AI voice cloning technology to impersonate the voices of loved ones or family members will ‘turbocharge’ this fraud going forward,” the MPLP wrote. “The federal Administration's proposed budget cuts would reduce staffing at the FTC, the federal agency charged with enforcing federal rules governing telephone solicitations. Recent federal court decisions have also limited the FTC's ability to protect consumers, particularly its ability to obtain monetary relief on behalf of consumers.”

Sen. Ed McBroom (R-Waucedah Twp.) offered a failed amendment to remove the exemptions for legislators and candidates who utilize such telephone operations. He asked, “When you're campaigning, why do you want to spend your money on these things that nobody wants?”

But although his amendment wasn't successful, he was pleased to see the state Senate doing something.

He talked about how when his mother aged into the Medicare system for seniors, her phone was overwhelmed with calls every 45 seconds for hours. He said calls came five days a week, sometimes coming in on Saturday.

“We eventually just shut her phone off. If she would turn it on to make a call, we would have to dodge between the robocalls before she could make her outgoing calls,” McBroom said. “I go to a welding shop in my hometown, where two brothers have been working there since they took the business over from their dad, and when the phone rings – of course, they have a loud buzzer that goes off . . . otherwise they would never hear the phone ringing in the shop – and 90 to 95 percent of the calls are junk mail calls, interrupting their work, forcing them to put everything down . . . then it's just junk.”

He said robocalls are ruining businesses and home lives. He said while there are business groups that provide telemarketing services upset with what the Senate did, he said the reality is that Michigan citizens are telling is “they are sick and tired of it. They don't want it to continue.”