Slashdot Mirror
Scammers Lower Comcast Bills, Get Jail Time
An anonymous reader writes with news about a scam with a twist. The scammers purchased login details to internal Comcast systems from an employee using them to lower the bills of Comcast customers, for a price. "Alston Buchanan, the mastermind of a two-man scam to lower the bills of Comcast customers for a price, pleaded guilty last week and awaits sentencing. His accomplice, Richard Justin Spraggins, who also pleaded guilty in February, will serve 11-23 months in prison and pay Comcast $66,825. Their operation purportedly cost Comcast $2.4 million, and Comcast claims that the loss has forced them to raise the rates on all their customers. However, the allegedly huge financial loss went undetected until a Comcast customer reported his/her suspicions to Comcast customer service."
the guy who did the internal investigation and lawyer costs... 2.4 million. I guess they're claiming that they don't know which discounted rates were legit and which were purchased so they removed the discount backdoor from the system. that's a bit fishy if they had used it for discounting feature for people who had suffered from service outages etc...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The risk/reward ratio of doing this would be lower than traditional investments. Otherwise you'd see rich people "Taming the Shrew" all the time in exchange for a percentage of the poor person's future earnings.