Verizon Tech Accused Of Making $220K In Sex Calls On User Lines 218
Joseph Vaccarelli, a former Verizon Technician, has been charged with racking up $220,000 in phone-sex calls by tapping into the land lines of nearly 950 customers. Authorities say that he made approximately 5,000 calls, resulting in 45,000 minutes of call time. Verizon estimated that out of a 40-week period, Vaccarelli spent 15 weeks talking on sex lines. How in the world do you have this much phone sex, period, but especially at work, and not have anyone notice?
Money Making Scheme (Score:5, Interesting)
Set up 900 premium phone service. ...
Get mate at Verizon to use customers phones to call said service.
Profit.
Nope, physical access. (Score:5, Interesting)
He didnt compromise accounts, in the summary it says he tapped into land lines. That can be done with a $5 telephone handset and a pair of aligator clips, and was probably done using an actual linemans handset provided to him by the company. Google "beige box" for more info.
Not difficult to achieve (Score:3, Interesting)
Technical wise. It is as simple as driving up to a cabinet, cracking open a pit or walking into an MDF/IDF room, finding a pair that has tone and dialing. If that one doesn't work, go to the next pair.
I used to make calls on customers lines all the time but never anything that would cause them to get billed (local calls for support, cable pair information, etc).
Re:1/3 the year on sex lines? (Score:3, Interesting)
I gather that he spent a lot of time jacking into those lines!
Well, you have that, or perhaps there were many jack-offs working for the phone company.
Seriously, that is a a hell of a lot of time dialing phone sex lines. 14.4 hours/week? 2.9 hours/day?
I'm really skeptical one person did this.
Re:uh (Score:5, Interesting)
At a previous job I had access to telephone exchanges. DSLAM firmware updates can easily take an hour or two and my diagnostic equipment included a telephone headset with a bix clip adapter.
Given that I was alone most of the time, there are thousands of lines going into the rooms I worked in and the competition left their panels out in the open I can completely see how someone with less of a moral backbone could have caused a lot of trouble without getting caught.
Someone working for the telco itself would have access to hundreds of thousands of lines.