Over claims that AT&T purposefully violated registration requirements for use of IP Relay, the US Department of Justice has sued the carrier. AT&T has collected millions of dollars from the government for fraudulent calls, a service that allows the hearing impaired to place calls over the internet by typing messages. Since from November 2009, the government says that the fraudulent calls accounted for 95-percent of AT&T’s IP Relay calls. Constance Lyttle, a former AT&T communications assistant that made the initial allegations about the undue billings and filed the lawsuit back in 2010.
AT&T Statement: AT&T has followed the FCC’s rules for providing IP Relay services for disabled customers and for seeking reimbursement for those services. As the FCC is aware, it is always possible for an individual to misuse IP Relay services, just as someone can misuse the postal system or an email account, but FCC rules require that we complete all calls by customers who identify themselves as disabled.
