telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (06/22/89)
A federal grand jury indicted a Chicago woman Tuesday for allegedly master- minding a nationwide ring of hackerphreaks that stole about $1.6 million in phone service from AT&T and Sprint. The indictment charges that Ms. Leslie Lynne Doucette, 35, of 6748 North Ashland Avenue, Chicago, and **152 associates** shared hundreds of stolen phone credit card numbers by breaking into corporate voicemail systems and using them as illicit computer bulletin boards to share information among themselves. TELECOM Digest readers, of course, do not need to be told what voicemail is, or how it works. Ms. Doucette and her associates had managed to infiltrate several voicemail systems, seizing unused mailboxes on each, through the manipulation of master accounts located by Doucette. The federal indictment further charges that the ring obtained more $9531.65 in merchandise and $1453 in Western Union money orders by charging them to stolen bank credit card numbers shared among the group on the illicit bulletin board. The government alleges that the value of the stoen voicemail service alone was $38,200. Stolen phone credit cards used at payphones amounted to another $286,362 of telephone service. But the biggest part of the theft, valued at $1,291,362.00 in the indictment, represented telephone service obtained through the illegal use of WATS- extenders installed on PBX lines of companies nationally. By looping through several diverters and including connections established with the fraudulent phone cards, the ring believed they would avoid detection by telephone companies and by the owners of the WATS-extenders. Corporate victims named in the alleged fraud are August Financial Corporation of Long Beach, CA and A-1 Beeper Service of Mobile, AL. Doucette has been held without bond, in the custody of the Attorney General at the Chicago Metropolitan Correctional Center since May 24, when she was arrested in a raid on her apartment in the Rogers Park neighborhood on Chicago's far north side. At the time of the raid, which was attended by agents of the FBI, along with representatives of Illinois Bell Telephone Company, AT&T and Sprint and Chicago Police officers, authorities recovered 168 stolen telephone credit cards numbers, 271 bank credit card numbers, and 39 WATS-extender dialup phone numbers, with a list of the passwords needed to access each. The indictment does not name any other members of the ring, but authorities said the investigation is continuing, and other indictments are expected. United States Attorney Anton R. Valukas (northern district of Illinois) said the indictment is the nation's first involving abuse of voicemail. He noted this is not the first known instance of abuse of voicemail, but simply the first indictment for it. At a press conference Tuesday in the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago on Tuesday, Valukas noted, "The proliferation of computer-assisted telecommunications and the increasing reliance on this equipment by American and international business create a potential for serious harm." He said that Ms. Doucette was 'first discovered' last December after a real estate broker in Rolling Meadows, IL (suburb of Chicago) reported that hackerphreaks had invaded and burglarized his company's voicemail system, and changed several passwords. Once detected, Illinois Bell set about tracing the calls in cooperation with Sprint and AT&T. Calls into the voicemail system were traced to private homes in Chicago, Columbus, OH, Detroit, Atlanta, and Boston. When those phones had been identified by telco people in their respective cities, audits were begun on the telephone records of the phones involved, which in turn led to voicemail systems and WATS-extenders in companies all over the United States. Patrick Townson