Sixteen premium rate services have been fined a total of £1.3m following a crackdown on rogue operators over the Easter weekend.

Last week ICSTIS warned punters to be on their guard against dodgy operators using illegal Automated Calling Equipment (ACE) after receiving credible market intelligence that scamsters were to step up their operations over the long weekend.
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On Friday it announced that it used an “unprecedented level of sanctions” to deal with 16 services using ACE to tell people they had won a cash prize or holiday. Those who fell for the scam ended up phoning expensive phone numbers but received nothing.

Using emergency powers the watchdog shut down the offending services and in some cases managed to freeze the income of some of the operators.

Source: The Register