Maryland

Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh today announced that Maryland is joining a nationwide Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force of 50 states to investigate and take legal action against the telecommunications companies responsible for bringing foreign robocalls into the United States. The bipartisan Task Force has one goal: to cut down on illegal robocalls.

“Robocalls are more than an annoyance, they are often schemes by fraudsters and scammers with the purpose of stealing billions of dollars from unsuspecting Americans,” said Attorney General Frosh. According to the National Consumer Law Center and Electronic Privacy Information Center, over 33 million scam robocalls are made to Americans every day. These scam calls include Social Security Administration fraud against seniors, Amazon scams against consumers, and many other scams targeting all consumers, including some of the most vulnerable. In 2021, scammers took $29.8 billion dollars through fraudulent calls, most of which originated overseas.

Governor Larry Hogan today announced that the State of Maryland has submitted its 2022 American Rescue Plan, State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF) Annual Performance Report to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The report—which details expenditures from March 3, 2021 through June 30, 2022 and includes planned allocations for Fiscal Year 2023—describes the use of the funds allocated to the state through the American Rescue Plan (ARP). Read the report.

Per the press release: “The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the worst economic collapse since the Great Recession and caused hardship for people all across our state and nation,” said Governor Hogan. “By utilizing these resources to supplement our aggressive economic relief measures, our state has led one of the strongest health and economic recoveries in America.”

With the Average American spending more than $12,500 per year on personal health care, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2022’s Best & Worst States for Health Care. Maryland came in 5th overall, ranking 1st in cost and 2nd in average monthly insurance premium.

In order to determine where Americans receive the highest-quality services at the best prices, WalletHub compared the 50 states and the District of Columbia across 42 key measures of health care cost, accessibility and outcome. The data set ranges from the average monthly insurance premium to physicians per capita to the share of insured population.

Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh this week announced that Maryland, along with six other attorneys general, has obtained an $8 million settlement with Wawa to resolve a December 2019 data breach that compromised approximately 34 million payment cards used at Wawa stores. Wawa has also agreed to a series of data security practices designed to strengthen its information security program and safeguard the personal information of consumers.

The Wawa data breach occurred after hackers gained access to Wawa’s computer network in late 2018 through a phishing attack, and later deployed malware on Wawa’s point-of-sale terminals. The malware extracted Wawa customers’ sensitive payment card information between April 18, 2019, and December 12, 2019, and affected stores in each of the six states where Wawa operates – New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia – as well as Washington, D.C.

There are no reports of the suspect driver trying to pull over any motorists. Troopers have located the suspect vehicle and have spoken to a person of interest in this case, but no charges have been filed at this time. Investigators are asking the public if they encountered this vehicle to please contact the Rockville Barrack at 301-424-2101. The case remains under investigation.