Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!pacbell.com!lll-winken!telecom-request From: 0004133373@mcimail.com (Donald E. Kimberlin) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Explain This Scam Message-ID: Date: 27 Jun 91 11:13:00 GMT Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Organization: TELECOM Digest Lines: 26 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 497, Message 3 of 10 reports a scam conducted by Michican prisoners ordering a new account with the aid of an acomplice who connects them to the common carrier's business office via three-way-calling: > When the phone company comes on the line, the customer is slient as > the inmate orders a new phone under a phony name. Our Moderator opines: > [Moderator's Note: I suspect they are ordering new service at the > address of a confederate on the outside. Tten they call collect > to 'their' new number; the confederate okays the charges and dials out > calls for them to wherever they really want to call. Then when the > service gets cut for non-payment, so be it ... That sounds too elegant and complex to Certainly, the LEC would soon tag any local address that has had several bad accounts! Rather, I suspect the "new service" is more likely to me a calling card account opened with some of those fine, upstanding telemarketers we so often hear about peddling long distance accounts. After all, there's a fertile field of several hundred of them to work, and they are so anxious for accounts their credit checking is minimal, if at all for most of them.