The facts
On October 16, 2026, the FCC's Enforcement Bureau removed Mexico IP Phone LLC's certification from the Robocall Mitigation Database, cutting the company off from American phone networks. Within two business days, every voice provider must stop accepting its traffic directly, and the company cannot refile without bureau approval.
The order says the company's February 2026 recertification was signed under penalty of perjury by CEO Hemant Kumar Bharti, named no individual principal, and claimed the company had faced no investigations in the prior two years. In fact, a multistate anti-robocall task force had written Bharti in August 2025 about at least 40 tracebacks of illegal or suspicious calls, and the FCC had tied the company to "Walmart impersonation robocalls".
The forgery came in February 2026, when Bharti emailed the numbering administrator a document purporting to be an FCC grant notice, numbered DA 26-8 and effective February 5. The real DA 26-8 belonged to a company called DayStarr. The FCC found the two notices identical except for the names, docket numbers, and dates: Mexico IP had created a "sham numbering authorization" using the DayStarr notice as its model.
Confronted, Bharti blamed "Lance Lee," a Malaysian freelancer found on Fiverr and supposedly paid in "Crypto Currency Payment". The company produced no Fiverr message history, no contact information for Lee, and the Fiverr account itself was gone. The FCC noted that Fiverr "does not accept cryptocurrency as a payment method", and that "ample evidence shows that Bharti himself likely orchestrated the numbering scheme": Bharti personally sent all three emails to the numbering administrator and signed the application under oath as its sole author.
Our take
Hemant Kumar Bharti's defense belongs in a museum of terrible lying. Step one: forge a federal document so lazily you keep the original document number, producing a "grant" that is identical to another company's except for a find-and-replace on the name. Step two: when the forgery is spotted, invent a guy. Not a colleague, not a vendor with an invoice, but "Lance Lee," a Malaysian Fiverr freelancer with no message history, no phone number, no LinkedIn, and a deleted account, whom you supposedly paid in crypto on a platform that does not take crypto. That is not an alibi. That is a Mad Lib filled in by a concussed parrot.
The FCC's reply is the driest kill shot in the file: "ample evidence shows that Bharti himself likely orchestrated the numbering scheme." Translation: we have the emails, genius. All three came from your address. You signed the application under oath. You are listed as the sole author. Lance Lee is a ghost and you are the one haunting the inbox.
And do not skip the perjury appetizer: Bharti signed a federal certification under penalty of perjury swearing the company had faced no investigations, months after a multistate task force sent him a letter about his robocall pipeline. That is not an oversight. That is signing a paper that says nobody is investigating you while the investigation letter sits on your desk.
Mexico IP pumped "high-volume illegal and/or suspicious call traffic" into American phones, including Walmart impersonation scams, then tried to loot phone numbers with a photocopied permission slip. Now the FCC has ripped its certification out and ordered every carrier to hang up on it. Lance Lee could not be reached for comment, because as far as anyone can tell, Lance Lee is not real, and Hemant Bharti is fucked.
