Mysterious Phone Charges

Friday, 2-21-2003: I got my phone bill the other day and besides all my regular charges, there were a bunch of calls to some town out in the boonies, maybe 30 miles from me. Calls lasting almost 20 minutes. Whoever did it called these people in the boonies throughout the month of January, sometimes lasting 1 minute and sometimes lasting 20. It’s just bizarre to me, I’m not used to being on the receiving end of toll fraud.

I used anywho.com to get the names of the people who were called and I called them up saying that I was Kevin Mitnick from AT&T Security. I was hoping they would know who called me from the Alton area for such long and frequent times but neither person had any idea. Both people I talked to were pretty old and it was hard to explain to them what was happening.

The calls are mostly in the early evening. Like 5pm and 6pm. One of the shorter calls are at 9am. I’m sure they didn’t get into my TNI, I would have noticed that. It’s not my neighbors who live in the same building (RIGHT RIJILV?!?!) because I know my wires don’t pass through their apartments. So it had to have been beige boxing. But in the middle of the day??? I bet it was a phone company employee. Yep, that’s the only explanation. A phone company employee is calling up relatives while pretending to work. Maybe it’s someone investigating me and they’re just trying to fuck with me. I just can’t imagine some phreak doing beige boxing at 9:30 in the morning. I know where both telco cans with my wires are located and neither one is secluded.

I don’t even have the line where the calls were made anymore. I disconnected it after I got my Vonage. Otherwise I’d be hooking up a VOX recorder to that line so I could hear the conversations taking place after they happened. I wonder if I’m going to see more charges on my February bill. OH THE ANXIETY. I think I’m going to check out the phone bills of these old people in the boonies and see who they like to call in Alton. I should have asked them if they had relatives with the phone company.