A different hustle:
A few years ago I took the Amtrak from D.C. to New York for a
meeting.
The next day I got a call from AT&T asking if I had made any
credit card calls from Penn Station about 5 p.m. the day before;
they said there had been an unusual amount of activity on my
card.
I said I'd made one or two calls and asked what was an "unusual
amount of activity". She said that between 5 and 6 p.m., 500
calls all over the world were made on my card.
Here's the deal:
Gangs of telephone number thieves watch airports, train stations,
and bus stations. They listen for people reciting their account
numbers or (in my case) they simply watch people dial. Then they
call the number into an apartment where people -- usually college
students and immigrants -- pay $5 or $10 to call anywhere in the
world for as long as they want. On your credit card. Costs about
a half billion a year.
Jim Castelli