Aaron Michael Jones A.K.A “Mike Jones” is one of the most awful men alive.

He has obtained vast riches by single-handedly polluting America’s phone network with billions of unwanted robocalls and destroyed an entire industry in the process. Virtually every American has received a call sent by his hand. In fact, he is probably the most notorious robodialer in history.

Yet for years I—and folks like me who try to do things the right way—have been watching him profit from his illegal conduct with impunity.

And it kind of sucks.

Mike Jones lives a lavish and luxurious lifestyle employing butlers, his own personal chef a fleet of exotic cars and is known to maintain gambling accounts at numerous Las Vegas Casinos.

All of us in the auto warranty game know the guy. He makes us all look terrible. While he fleeces Americans and bombards them with prerecorded calls, those of us trying to sell LEGITIMATE vehicle service contracts take the fall out. He is the bad apple that spoils the bunch. And he makes everyone else’s life harder as he takes—and spends lavishly— the cream profits.

Watching him has sometimes made me wonder whether I was doing it wrong. Whether I should give up compliant marketing and just start blasting away like he does. And if I’m thinking it, I know others are thinking it too.

That’s why I was so incredibly happy to read about Mike Jones FINALLY (perhaps) being brought down. And it isn’t the feds that are after him this time. It is the State of Ohio’s AG that has brought a huge new enforcement action against him and his ring of associates. See Complaint here: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ohio/ohsdce/2:2022cv02700/270286.

Mike Jones has slipped through the fingers of regulator in the past, however. According to news reports—and I have first-hand confirmed information—he testified before the FTC back in 2015 and faced seemingly incredible pressure from the feds, before returning, unfazed, to his Spanish Colonial Mansion in a gated community near Laguna Beach California and continuing to do just what he was doing before.

In January 2017, The FTC sued him. Five months later, a federal judge banned him from telemarketing and hit him with a 2.7 million dollar fine.

Mike Jones just shrugged and kept going.

Mike Jones is one of those people who thinks he is simply above the law (IMO) often getting caught and simply just rolling over and moving on to do it all over again.

Backing up, Mike Jones has been facilitating robocalls since at least 2001 through a platform named “TelWeb” also known as the “TelServers.” Through his various holding companies and enterprises, he accessed and resold access to the “TelWeb” servers through multiple shell companies and foreign entities.

Back then Mike Jones was spread across multiple verticals, search engine optimization services, home security systems and lead generation for multiple other industries—not just auto warranties.

In 2019, however, Mike Jones began to focus heavily on the Auto Warranty industry—and that’s when he really started to make me angry. While I ran a humble shop making a relatively meager number of live calls a day to reach consumers who genuinely might be interested in the vehicle service contracts, I was selling, Mike just blasted away to millions (MILLIONS) of people a day. Complete strangers that would hear about (and come to think about) auto warranty products the same away they heard of IRS and Walmart gift card scams.

It was terrible for me. Hurt my business tremendously. In fact, it led to me mostly leaving the vertical to focus on other products.

Stated directly, Aaron Michael Jones has single handedly destroyed the Auto Warranty industry. Just How many billions of robocalls has he facilitated since 2001 is simply unknown, but I sincerely hope that the State of Ohio succeeds in shutting him down for good.

Keep in mind folks Ohio maybe leading the effort but multiple other state Attorney Generals are involved and, hopefully, this is just the beginning for guys like Mike. … With the TRACED act now in full effect it is important that would be ROBO KINGS that might take up Mike’s mantle see what happens to guys like him. He needs to be crushed. Perhaps jail time. Maybe when people see Mike Jones languishing behind bars—instead of high-rolling at Vegas pool parties—they will understand the importance of compliance and take the TCPA seriously the way I (and others) in the industry do.

There is a big difference between guys like Mike and companies that try to comply with the TCPA but perhaps fail due to the complexity of the law. Mike is a bad guy. And it is good to see the government going after a bad guy. I, for one, am HEAVILY rooting for them.

The Wizard will be personally keeping an eye on this one for you TCPAWorld. (And thanks to the Czar for letting me post on this news. It is pretty personal for me.)

Editor’s Note: The Wizard is awesome. The guy runs call centers and always tries to do things the right way. When this story came out he was so happy to see one of the true bad guys might actually face consequences that he asked to blog on TCPAWorld about it–of course I said yes. 

PJ Ghaneian​ authored this article.