A residential client called me around supper time tonight to inquire about a problem that she was having. Multiple calls within the last 24 hours and when she answers, she gets dead air and the CLID disappears right away.

I told her it was probably Telemarketers searching for how numbers are answered, whether it was by fax or voice. (I once had a client with 5 or 6 residential lines into her house and was being paid by a company to do just that. She was given one exchange at a time, anywhere in North America & once she was done, she'd get another one.)

Anyway I told her to report the issue to the CRTC and file a complaint with them as well as with Bell.

The client just called back and since we talked she had been on the line with Bell (for over an hour). She is now the proud owner of an invoice of $837.00....all within the last 24 hours and they won't cancel the charges. They claimed that these scammers call a number and if someone answers, it triggers long distance calls to be made and charged to the innocent victim's number AND it's the victim's fault by answering the phone.

So again, I tell her to file a complaint with the CRTC, Bell and notify the media as Bell will not credit her account. She sure as hell won't be paying the bill. She made THAT very clear!

The following numbers were showing in her call log:
425-406-9023
872-253-9786
061-897-4427
238-827-1006 and
066-945-6632

These numbers are non-existent and that was verified by Bell as they tried to call them as well. I assume they're coming from a PRI line and being spoofed, so the numbers may be irrelevant.

The client's problem is that her husband is very sick & his son travels the world for some big company so they never know where he'll be calling from...

Any of you CO guys have some input that I can pass on?

Oh, BTW, Bell told her it was her responsibility because SHE answered the phone. Guess that means we can't even answer our phones now or possibly be hit with this scam. Bell - Are you kidding me?

The "061" & "066" lead me to believe that the calls were originating from overseas. Might the first 3 digits be country codes?

That's what I thought, but Bell supposedly tried to call them all while they had my client on hold. I tend to believe that they're spoofed numbers.

The big issue is, how is the client, anyone for that matter, supposed to know until they get their bill at the end of the month...especially someone without Caller ID?

At least with CLID, any unknown area codes could be simply not answered.

Paul, have you ever heard of a scam like this where the client receiving the call didn't touch any numbers on the keypad?

As described, nope.

No way the receiving party should be legally billed for the calls without giving consent to a Bell Canada (or some other provider's) operator (such as reverse charging).

Per Wikipedia:

425 - Unassigned
872 - Unassigned (Formerly Inmarsat)
061 - Australia
238 - Cape Verde
066 - Thailand

So this could be a spoofing situation. Of course Bell Canada would have to do a trace on the calls to see how they went through their network. Depending on the Central Office equipment, some part of the CDRs would indicate if the calls were to tagged as reverse bill.

Scary to think that a spoofer could manipulate CDR information so that the term party gets billed for a call.

Had some time to kill while waiting for dinner to cook.

It looks like Wkipedia is wrong about code 872, the North American Number Planning Admin search page shows it as being in service to Chicago IL.

A further search request came back with conflicting ownership of the exchange and number block, one identified a carrier that owned it and a different search shows the block unassigned.

872 is quite valid as an NPA in the Chicago metropolitan area and 425 is an NPA in Washington. As far as these being country codes, I don't have a clue, but I'd sure be of the mindset that international billing is where this is coming from.

I've seen this before, this indeed is spoofing. There are some CLEC's and ILEC's out there who do not monitor the spoofing going on. A few providers I know of do. ModernWorks is one that does not allow it, as doesn't Fibrenetics. Bell doesn't care as they mostly have resellers like Distributel to handle stuff like that.
The CRTC knows this is happening and they don't really care. It takes too much resources to stop it. There was a Marketplace 2 part series on this(mostly concerning Duct Cleaning Services)that are spoofing the numbers from Pakistan and India.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Telemarketing. They're just using her number to pay the LD charges without her knowledge or consent. That's FRAUD, pure & simple and the CRTC had better start giving a damn.

I can foresee major lawsuits in the future.

Bell Canada really needs to review the CDRs to see where the calls originated from. Just throwing this question out....is there any chance that someone remoted into the phone system and called out using the actual phone lines?

This is a residential line....no system to hack per say...

Sounds more & more like spoofing.

The only other options (really reaching at this point)I can think of would be bridge-tapping or (even more remote) pressing buttons to allow the outside party to access the phone line.

I wouldn't think bridge tapping would require a call to the customer.
I can't imagine how they are fooling a res line into allowing a piggybacked call.

Every so often there are stories on the news of how prison inmates.....pretending to be Telephone Company employees who are testing telephone lines.....call unsuspecting home owners and ask them to press a sequence of buttons that allows the inmate to place calls over the homeowner's telephone line.

I know this is really a reach.

I had an account in Houston where some inmates had hacked a mailbox on a DID. They changed the greeting to say "Yes I will." They were selling the DID numbers to other inmates for third party billing on calls from the jail. They called the operator for 3rd party billing, she dialed the number and heard "Yes I will." Call goes through.

UPDATE:

The client called last night. After thinking about it all weekend, she called Bell on Monday to verify the charges. When told that they were LD charges, she inquired as to how that could be when Rogers is her LD carrier, not Bell.

"Ooops, awww, Geeee, I guess we made a mistake on the charges." They cancelled the charges, so now she will wait to see her Rogers invoice when it comes in on Friday or Monday.

If she is charged, I think Bell has some explaining to do....and they will....when Rogers complains that the client refuses to pay the invoice.

The 425 number belongs to a telemarketing company called Marquee Listing. The company's real number is 949-268-0188. all the others looked like bogus numbers.