Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: jimmy@icjapan.uucp (Jim Gottlieb) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Phone Cards Message-ID: Date: 29 Sep 89 09:25:06 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Reply-To: Jim Gottlieb Organization: Info Connections, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan Lines: 36 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 420, message 3 of 11 In article cgch!wtho@mcsun.eu.net (Tom Hofmann) writes: >As I see there are two different types of phone cards around the world. >For the other type you pay a certain amount and this amount is >coded on the card itself. For usage you push the card into a special >slot of a public phone, and the coded amount is decreased while making >a call. An "empty" card can be thrown away (e.g. Switzerland). While these stored-value cards are definitely convenient and one avoids calling card surcharges, they always seemed to me to be too susceptible to fraud. After all, the sole record of your balance is sitting on the card in your pocket. Well, today's Japan Times reports the case of someone who was charged with buying cards with 50 10-yen (about 7 U.S. cents) units on them and reprogramming them with several thousand units and then selling them. Surprisingly, the case was dropped because the court determined that this person had not broken any laws! They said that since he had not planned to use the cards himself, he had not cheated the phone company out of any money. And since he dutifully informed the people he sold the cards to that they had been modified, he was not guilty of any securities law violation. I suspect that the Diet will need to quickly come up with a law to make this illegal, or a massive industry will sprout, with no fear of prosecution. The article did not mention anything about the eventual end-users of the cards or whether they would be prosecuted. Jim Gottlieb Info Connections, Tokyo, Japan _-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_ or or Fax: (011)+81-3-239-7453 Voice Mail: (011)+81-3-944-6221 ID#82-42-424