Unknown international calls

I checked my on-line status to see how many minutes I had left, and saw that
Sprint was showing an international call in my usage. Their website was
down (again), their customer service line went to a recording saying try
back later, so I emailed them. This morning I got a response saying they
were charging me $96.12 for 196 minutes in international calls going to
Kingston, Jamaica, all to the same number. The calls, according to them,
took place between 3/15 and 4/12.

No one else uses my cell phone, no one else even has access to it, and it is
with me constantly, I never leave it unattended in a purse, it is always on
my person. I tried googling that number, but nothing comes up.

First question, is how in the world could calls be made from my cell phone
number without anyone having the cell phone??? Second question is do I have
any recourse?

Thanks in advance.

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› See More: Unknown international calls

On Wed, 9 May 2007 06:53:17 -0500, "Karen in MN"
<ask.me.for.my.email.address> wrote:

>I checked my on-line status to see how many minutes I had left, and saw that
>Sprint was showing an international call in my usage. Their website was
>down (again), their customer service line went to a recording saying try
>back later, so I emailed them. This morning I got a response saying they
>were charging me $96.12 for 196 minutes in international calls going to
>Kingston, Jamaica, all to the same number. The calls, according to them,
>took place between 3/15 and 4/12.
>
>No one else uses my cell phone, no one else even has access to it, and it is
>with me constantly, I never leave it unattended in a purse, it is always on
>my person. I tried googling that number, but nothing comes up.
>
>First question, is how in the world could calls be made from my cell phone
>number without anyone having the cell phone??? Second question is do I have
>any recourse?
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
>
>
Here are a couple of ideas which may help.

1. Look at the list of calls. With luck at least one of the calls to
Jamaica will be at excatly the same time as a call you made. How then
could you make two calls at the same time? (queastion to Sprint)

2. Have you ever made any international calls? If not point this out
to the person. Maybe this will help raise doubt about the legitimacy
of the calls. Even if you have made international calls point out that
none or them were to Jamaica, or only once or twice a year, and that
you paid for them.

3. Ask them to determine what tower initiated the calls. They should
be able to do this for you. I assume from your header that you are in
Minnesota. With luck the calls were somehow recorded as being made in
Florida.

Over all I think your goal must be to try show them how unusual these
calls were and that you wouldn't have questioned them if you had have
made them.

I guess one final thing you could do would be try to determine what
that number in Jamaica is. Don't call them from any phone of your
though - for obviousl reasons. Maybe you will get lucky and be able to
prove or show fraud or something.

I don't know if any of the above will really help but hopefully they
give you a little bit of a starting point.

>>First question, is how in the world could calls be made from my cell phone
>>number without anyone having the cell phone??? Second question is do I
>>have
>>any recourse?

I had a similar situation where about $600 of calls within Mexico showed up
on my bill.
I called sprint and told them:
1. I've never been to Mexico
2. I've never called any mexican phone numbers
3. I was on vacation in Maine at the time of the mexican calls, and
fortunately I made a couple of calls within hours of some of the Mexican
calls, so the obligatory "how could I be in two places at once?" question
was stated.

They did an investigation and dropped the charges for those calls, though it
did take a while and I got some late messages and had to call them several
times and threaten them not to turn off my phone for non-payment of the
contested charges. I had a credit balance of several hundred dollars, but
not enough to cover that. Evidently, the fraud department doesn't
automatically keep the billing department notified when there is a dispute,
and they will turn off the phone. This was several years ago, but if their
more recent CS effort is any indication, they haven't streamlined their
procedures.

>
> First question, is how in the world could calls be made from my cell phone
> number without anyone having the cell phone???

Since nobody else has volunteered the answer, I will give my explanation,
based on my limited understanding of how they do that.

Your phone has an internal # that is used to identify your phone to any
network tower/system that your phone contacts. This same # probably
connects to your billing/use records. Your phone is almost constantly
checking in with local towers to let the system know where you are, and to
listen for incoming calls.

If a phone pirate gets your phones #(ESN--Electronic Service Number?) and
loads it into another phone then all calls made by the pirate phone will be
accredited to your account.
Pretty slick, I guess they could get your # by monitoring the data stream in
the air, or possibly by just trying different numbers until they find one
that works. I'm surprised that this eventuality isn't more common.
When my phone bill showed up with bogus calls on it the first thing sprint
did was to change my phones' ESN so they could deactivate the old # that was
being used fraudulently.

"Floyd" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news[email protected]...
> >
> > First question, is how in the world could calls be made from my cell
phone
> > number without anyone having the cell phone???
>
> Since nobody else has volunteered the answer, I will give my explanation,
> based on my limited understanding of how they do that.
>
> Your phone has an internal # that is used to identify your phone to any
> network tower/system that your phone contacts. This same # probably
> connects to your billing/use records. Your phone is almost constantly
> checking in with local towers to let the system know where you are, and to
> listen for incoming calls.
>
> If a phone pirate gets your phones #(ESN--Electronic Service Number?) and
> loads it into another phone then all calls made by the pirate phone will
be
> accredited to your account.
> Pretty slick, I guess they could get your # by monitoring the data stream
in
> the air, or possibly by just trying different numbers until they find one
> that works. I'm surprised that this eventuality isn't more common.
> When my phone bill showed up with bogus calls on it the first thing sprint
> did was to change my phones' ESN so they could deactivate the old # that
was
> being used fraudulently.


Yep, that's what they were suspecting when I called the Fraud Dept (I
totally gave up on the customer support number -- average queue time was
greater than 20 minutes every time I got through, and a few times, I
couldn't even get in queue, just got the "try your call later" recording).

However, The fraud group, while suspecting cell cloning, checked and
couldn't find the calls/usage that the first CS person emailed me with.
They are apparently going through a major billing system change. The fraud
person said there was probably a mix-up, and that they were being inundated
with calls due to the change. Apparently I wasn't the only one, she said
she had just talked to someone who got a call saying their number had been
cloned, and it hadn't.

The first person who supposedly found these international calls was going to
send me the detail in the mail since the website wasn't working properly.
She made a point of telling me this was normally a $5 charge, but they were
going to credit me with that since the website wasn't working right. Five
days later and nothing has been received. All I can do is wait for the
regular paper monthly bill to come in and see what that shows.