Phone scammers badgered New Yorkers with an eye-popping 293 million robocalls in April alone, according to U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, who announced Sunday support for a new bill to tamp down on the unwanted intrusions.
That figure averages out to 112 calls per second — and 11 calls per New Yorker, according to the Democrat’s office.
“It’s a plague that we’ve got to cure — whether it’s the landline or cell phone, no one should be woken up in the dead of night by multiple robocalls,” Schumer said in a statement.
In New York City alone, there were 141.86 million such calls reported, according to Schumer’s figures.
Those with citywide 917 area codes endured the most bother — with 48 million calls going to those numbers in April. Customers with the outer-borough, 347 prefix had the second most with 42.3 million.
Meanwhile, a relatively few 2.3 million spam calls went to those with the sought-after 212 Manhattan area code, according to the senator’s numbers.
The TRACED Act, which Schumer is co-sponsoring, aims to cut the cord on scammers by ratcheting up fines to $10,000 per bogus call, while also extending the statute of limitations for punishing perpetrators from one year to three years after each incident, Schumer’s office said.
The annoying calls come for all sorts of reasons — but almost none of them are legitimate, according to Schumer’s office. Sometimes callers pose as insurance companies or government officials to con people into handing them money, other scams involve calling marks from disguised long-distance numbers and hanging up so the victims call back and rack up immense long-distance bills.