Check your phone bill

Look at your phone bill very carefully.  It may well contain small charges that add up to a major world-wide scam:

Roy and John Lin made a devilish fortune in the details of phone bills, according to a federal investigation.

The San Francisco brothers hired overseas telemarketers to offer directory assistance and other services to small businesses and ordinary Americans, according to a major case to be unveiled this week by the Federal Trade Commission. But their real goal was to sneak small, unauthorized fees onto thousands of monthly bills and hope the charges would go unnoticed, court documents state.

The scheme, known as “cramming,” proved to be a boon, the documents show. The Lins’ alleged take: $19 million over five years.

The Lins are among a resurgent wave of crammers who may be ensnaring millions of Americans, federal officials and consumer advocates say. A decade ago, the scam was so widespread that it became one of the most profitable business lines of the Gambino crime family.

A wave of federal and state crackdowns pushed the crime into remission. But as phone bills, both conventional and cellular, have become more complex, crammers are making a comeback by using sophisticated marketing techniques and by launching their schemes from overseas to try to escape the purview of U.S. regulators.

via Misdials help ‘crammers’ ring up millions in phone bill scam – washingtonpost.com.

Read the rest of the article for how these ingenious criminals get on your phone bill.