New York State Office of the Attorney General Latitia James released the report on May 10, 2021.  “On June 19, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) received a comment from Kenneth Langsam of Nassau, New York. Mr. Langsam had written to express support for the proposed repeal of regulations that require internet service providers to treat all internet communications equally. Mr. Langsam “urge[d]” the agency to eliminate these anti-discrimination protections, often referred to as net neutrality rules.However, there was one problem: Mr. Langsam had died seven years earlier. The comment was fabricated and his identity stolen.Mr. Langsam’s story is not unique; as detailed below, the Office of the New York Attorney General (OAG) found that fake comments accounted for nearly 18 million of the more than 22million comments the FCC received during its 2017 rulemaking. This type of fraud has significant consequences for our democracy. Federal and state agencies rely on public comments to set standards that govern many aspects of our lives, from public health to consumer protection to the environment, and, in this case, the rules that govern how we share and consume content over the internet. Public comments can also influence legislators and the laws they enact. This report is the product of an extensive investigation by the OAG of the parties that sought to influence the FCC’s 2017 proceeding to repeal the agency’s net neutrality rules. In the course of that investigation, the OAG obtained and analyzed tens of thousands of internal emails, planning documents, bank records, invoices, and data comprising hundreds of millions of records. Our investigation confirmed many contemporaneous reports of fraud that dogged that rulemaking process. The OAG found that millions of fake comments were submitted through a secret campaign, funded by the country’s largest broadband companies, to manufacture support for the repeal of existing net neutrality rules using lead generators. And millions more were submitted by a 19-year old college student using made-up identities. The OAG also found that the FCC’s rulemaking proceeding was not unique. Some of the same parties and tactics have infected other rulemakings and processes for public engagement…”