Prank calls to the police get you arrested, even when using Skype

[rbcp]

FBI Targets Prankster Who Harassed Police

MARCH 30--In what should serve as a warning to telephone pranksters, the FBI last week raided the Wisconsin home of a 20-year-old man suspected of using Skype to place hundreds of hoax calls this year to sheriff’s departments in Florida and Minnesota.

The prank calls, placed to toll free emergency service numbers, resulted in deputies responding to many “false reports of individuals in danger, some of whom purportedly suffered life threatening injuries,” according to an FBI affidavit.

One prank call cited by Pruitt involved a male caller who said he was in the bathroom of a McDonald’s with his “five year old girlfriend,” and that he wanted to be arrested. Fearing that a child was in danger, seven Florida deputies responded to eight McDonald’s locations, while five dispatchers worked for about two hours. “After extensive response by numerous officers from various agencies, no caller or victim was located and the call was considered a hoax,” reported Pruitt.

The prank calls seemed to come from a series of different phone numbers, though it appears the numbers were “spoofed” to hide the actual number from which the calls were placed. Still, the prank calls were traced to Seckar’s Skype account through an analysis of phone records and subpoenaed account information from Skype and Yahoo.

During a late-January call to Rice County’s emergency line, the caller claimed that he wanted to become a police officer and “wanted to know what it felt like to be ‘tased.’” He also claimed to be interested in becoming a school teacher, but was worried that he would “make inappropriate advances toward the young girls.”

There's a lot more in the article here:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/internet/fbi-targets-prankster-who-harassed-police-867530

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1101701458 is the prankster's Facebook page, but it's all private.

Articles always say that pranksters are "spoofing" their numbers when using Skype, but that's just Skype showing their own random phone numbers.

[nyphonejacks]

when will people learn to use disposable prepaid cell phones...

[Acidpez]

when they see ppl like dex get away with shit  they think they can to.

[markov]

when will people learn to use disposable prepaid cell phones...

that's all I use.. both for personal use, and I have one just for pranks.. cheap as shit, don't have to even worry about caller id spoofing. I intentionally give the number out for hilarious voicemails

[nyphonejacks]

when will people learn to use disposable prepaid cell phones...

that's all I use.. both for personal use, and I have one just for pranks.. cheap as shit, don't have to even worry about caller id spoofing. I intentionally give the number out for hilarious voicemails

yea that or you could just forward the number to a telephone company recording... i like forwarding it to a NIS recording... confuses the shit out of people trying to call back and keeps the phone from ringing... people that need to call me know at least one of the many numbers that i actually answer...

[rbcp]

This article about the same story has some really interesting information about how the police tracked down the guy responsible.  It's all what you'd expect, but kind of cool to have it all laid out for you.

"Detective Gazdick  served a subpoena on Neutral Tandem Switching which showed many calls using Skype software to a specific 1-800 number from user "mseckar." Then the detective served Skype with a subpoena for information about "mseckar" to find out the date, IP address, and email address used when "mseckar" registered his Skype account. This also led to other IP addresses and times used to connect to other dispatchers at toll free emergency service phone numbers that had also received prank calls. The registered email address for the Skype account was on Yahoo, so Yahoo was also served with a subpoena to determine IP and full name of Mason Seckar associated with the account."

It's all stuff from that original Smoking Gun report, but I was too lazy to read through all of that.

[Q_]

when will people learn to use disposable prepaid cell phones...

While driving around in a rented car, with a voice changer

[markov]

another interesting bit from that article.. The first sentence is funny and somewhat contradicts the rest of the paragraph(way to prove your point there, writer)


Prank calls are funny to some people, but it seems childish and mean-spirited to me. According to the New York Times, a good prank simulates a crisis without being the real thing. The psychology behind pranks ranges from experts calling it bullied harassment to "a kind of flattery." Dr. Kathleen D. Vohs, a consumer psychologist at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, claimed, "Being duped holds up this mirror to people, and may in fact show them where they are on the scale - too trusting or too vigilant." When people replay the prank over in their head, thinking how they could have reacted differently, feeling like they should have known better, it can "kick-start new behaviors, new self-exploration and, ultimately, self-improvement," said Neal Roese, a psychologist at the University of Illinois.

[tk]

First off, that guy is just plain nuts. Better that he got arrested for asking if somebody's refrigerator was running than from shooting a senator or something.

Second, anybody who messes with the cops is just ASKING to be arrested. Seriously. Stay off the death threats and stick to the guaranteed way of getting a good reaction out of victims: just confuse the hell out of them.