FTC hangs up on robocalls from ‘Rachel'

“ ‘Rachel from Cardholder Services' is public enemy No. 1,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement.

The FTC receives 200,000 complaints a month about robocalls. The agency has shut down companies responsible for 2.6 billion telemarketing calls since such calls were outlawed in 2009, but that's a drop in the bucket, FTC said.

The agency says it can't trace or block about 59 percent of phone spam because the calls route through a tangle of automatic dialers, caller ID spoofing and voice-over-Internet protocols.

The problem is so bad that earlier this month the FTC offered a $50,000 prize to anyone who could come up with a way to stop telephonic spam. The contest runs until Jan. 17.

FTC said the “Rachel” telemarketing companies, all based in Arizona and Florida, told consumers that they could drastically reduce their credit card interest rates if they paid initial fees. Asking for such an up-front fee for debt-reduction services is illegal, the FTC said.

Calls from “Rachel” told listeners that there was an “important message” for them regarding high credit card interest rates, the FTC said. Listeners were then told to press 1 to speak with an operator, or 2 to stop getting the calls.