If you haven't received those pesky recorded "car warranty" phone calls, consider yourself blessed. Some of us have gotten as many as one every day.

Unnamed companies have been using the so-called "robo-calls" to solicit the purchase of extended car warranties.

That's bad enough - and perhaps illegal enough - but it's worse than that. The calls try to fool you into thinking it's an extension of your current warranty - and, by extension, that you're dealing with your current provider.

Nothing could be further from the truth. These are predators, plain and simple, flouting the law and inconveniencing you - and arguably perpetrating a fraud on the public. Many of the calls say "This is your second notice..." You get that "second" notice over and over and over.

By one estimate, Americans have been tricked out of $10 million or more through the call warranty scams.

A judge in Illinois has issued two restraining orders against those perpetrators who have so far been discovered. And the Federal Trade Commission announced Friday it had "disconnected the people responsible for so many of these annoying calls."

That's wonderful news. But to ensure they and others don't just pop up somewhere else, that $10 million should be paid back to consumers, and draconian fines must be levied on anyone found guilty of tying up millions of phone users with an estimated 1 billion fraudulent spam calls.

In an increasingly connected and shrunken world, this kind of global fraud must be nipped in the bud.