WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Congressman Rob Menendez (NJ-08) and Congressman Jefferson Shreve (IN-06) introduced the bipartisan Stop SIM Box Scams Act, which would ban the hardware that enables scammers to disguise robocalls as local telephone numbers.
In 2025, Americans received approximately 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts and lost nearly $2 billion to these scams. By masking international or out-of-state calls with local area codes, scammers exploit trust and dramatically increase answer rates among unsuspecting victims.
“Scammers shouldn’t be able to use our area codes to rip off our communities,” said Congressman Menendez. “Our legislation bans the deceptive devices that allow scammers to masquerade as our neighbors, cutting off a key tool for fraudsters and protecting working families.”
“That ‘local’ Indiana number on your phone may be a scammer calling from halfway around the world,” said Congressman Shreve. “I wrote this bill to stop scammers from using these machines to pose as our neighbors.”
The legislation targets “SIM boxes,” which are specialized devices that house hundreds of SIM cards at once, cycling through local phone numbers to help scam syndicates flood individuals with robocalls and text messages while evading law enforcement detection.
The Stop SIM Box Scams Act would prohibit manufacturing, importing, selling, leasing, advertising, owning, or operating SIM boxes. It would also direct the Federal Communications Commission to coordinate with federal law enforcement to block imports and prosecute people who use them.
Read the full bill text here.
Congressman Rob Menendez has been a leader on combatting scams and has led two scam-related pieces of legislation that recently passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Congressman Menendez has represented New Jersey’s Eighth Congressional District since 2023. He serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee, including the Subcommittees on Environment, Energy, and Communications and Technology. To learn more about his work, click here.
