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Telephony Fraudster Gets Lifetime Ban from Telecom Business
coondoggie passed us another NetworkWorld link, this one discussing the banning of a shady telecom tycoon convicted for 'cramming'. "The owner of three companies that billed more than $30 million in bogus collect call charges, an activity known as cramming, to millions of consumers throughout the country, has been banned forever from all billing on local telephone bills. Willoughby Farr agreed to the lifetime ban as part of a federal court order settling Federal Trade Commission charges that he directed a massive unauthorized billing scam for more than two and a half years. The settlement contains a monetary judgment of $34,547,140, which will be partially satisfied by Farr's transfer to the Commission of all but $7,500 of his frozen assets, the FTC said."
I checked this out a while ago. My sister spent some time locked up, and I wanted to be able to receive collect calls from her. She tried calling my cell number a few times, but was told the number wouldn't accept them. I never got a call. I called T-Mobile to "activate" a collect call um...authorization/ability/whatever, and was informed that I couldn't accept collect calls on my phone. Even if I wanted to. The CSR told me they didn't have the ability to allow it, due to customers denying collect call charges once they appeared on the bill. I couldn't tell if it was just a policy to turn collect call receiving off to begin with, and with a little pushing they'd allow them, but after 30 minutes of going up their chain of command, and no different answer, I gave up.
I'm sure someone else here knows more about this than me (or the not-so-helpful T-Mobile CSR's.)