The US neo-Nazi Scott Rhodes has to pay a fine of almost ten million US dollars because he forged his caller ID for racist spam calls. The US Federal Court for Montana has now confirmed this decision by the US regulatory authority FCC from 2021. Rhodes made automated calls and harassed thousands of US citizens with recorded messages. These included xenophobic lies, racist attacks on politicians, attempts to influence jurors and threats against journalists.
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Such spam alone does not necessarily result in a penalty in the United States. However, it is forbidden in the country to falsify caller ID if you want to cheat or otherwise cause damage. Rhodes didn't deny the robocalls, but tried to excuse himself: In some of the calls he had displayed a phone number assigned to him – and the FCC actually reduced the fine from $12.91 million for 6,455 known spam calls to just $9.918 million for the 4,959 cases in which Rhodes was found to have displayed a fake number – $2,000 per call.
The spammer was unsuccessful with his argument that the fake numbers were not just numbers, but contained Nazi codes. Therefore, Rhodes said, if the false phone numbers themselves constituted a political message, the deception would be covered by the right to freedom of expression.
The man was unable to convince the FCC. On the one hand, he had claimed elsewhere that he had not been involved in selecting the phone numbers. On the other hand, the Supreme Court of the United States has already ruled in another case (Spence v. Washington) decided that freedom of expression is only protected if the person making the expression intends to transmit certain content and the recipients are likely to understand that content.
Nazi uses court case to further harass
Because the fine was not paid, the telephone spam Nazi was taken to court. He also made himself unpopular there with anti-Semitic and otherwise inappropriate submissions as well as doxxing a US prosecutor. The judge had to issue a series of rare orders, including a ban on doxxing and a condition that the court remove non-compliant submissions from the file without further action.
At the same time, Rhodes used legal maneuvers to harass journalist Ben Olson in the state of Idaho. Olson reported on Rhodes' spam calls in the Sandpoint Reader and revealed the identity of the perpetrator. Citing the ongoing litigation in Montana, Rhodes wanted to force the journalist to disclose documents. The U.S. District Court for Idaho ultimately had to rule that these subpoenas were inadmissible because the documents requested by Olson would be irrelevant to the proceedings in Montana (USA v. Scott Rhodes, 23-mc-00304).
Penalty confirmed and extended to include bans
Rhodes does not deny his calls, which is why the responsible court in Montana did not have to shake up the facts. The court declared that it had no jurisdiction over the argument that the anti-spam law violated the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech – this would be the responsibility of the higher second instance to decide if necessary. The district court considers the fine to be appropriate, given the possible penalty range of up to $11,766 per call. The defendant's alleged lack of money has no bearing on the matter.
In addition to the fine, the court imposes several injunctions on the neo-Nazi, including a ban on transmitting pre-recorded information over the telephone unless the person you are speaking to has given written consent in advance, and a further ban on falsifying caller ID numbers. This means that the perpetrator could face prison sentences for contempt of court in the future if he violates these requirements.
However, Rhodes, who has so far represented himself, can appeal. If he does that, he can try again in the Federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to have the anti-spam law struck down as unconstitutional. The chances of success are slim because the appeal court has already rejected similar arguments in another case.
The procedure is called USA v. Scott Rhodes and was pending in the United States District Court for Montana under case number 9:21-cv-00110.
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