AT&T sued over calls for deaf

AT&T didn't put in procedures to prevent fraud by people using stolen credit cards on the Internet-based system, the Justice Department says. Its suit charges AT&T improperly billed the government as a result.

|
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters/File
The AT&T logo is seen at their store in Times Square in New York in this 2010 file photo. The Justice Department is suing AT&T, arguing the company billed it improperly for a system that allows the deaf to make calls by typing over the Internet.

The Justice Department has sued to recover millions of dollars from AT&T Corp., alleging the company improperly billed the government for services that are designed for use by the deaf and hard-of-hearing who place calls by typing messages over the Internet.

The system has been abused by callers overseas who use it to defraud U.S. merchants by ordering goods with stolen credit cards and counterfeit checks. In response, the federal government ordered telecom companies to register their users.

The Justice Department lawsuit said Dallas-based AT&T failed to adopt procedures to detect or prevent fraudulent users from registering. The government said the company feared its call volumes would drop once fraudulent users were prevented from calling on the system. The government reimbursed AT&T $1.30 per minute for every call on this system.

AT&T spokesman Marty Richter said the company has followed Federal Communications Commission rules for providing these services for disabled customers and for seeking reimbursement for those services.

AT&T has allowed thousands of calls by fraudulent users who registered with fake names or addresses and then billed the government for making the calls, the Justice Department said in court papers filed Wednesday. The department alleged that up to 95 percent of such calls handled by AT&T since November 2009 have been made by fraudulent users.

The United States has paid millions of dollars for calls by international fraudsters, the Justice Department's complaint says. Many of the calls are made by Nigerian users.

The department's action came as an intervention to take over a "private whistleblower" lawsuit that was filed in 2010 in federal court in Pittsburgh by Constance Lyttle, a former AT&T communications assistant in one of the company's call centers who made the original allegations about the improper billings. If the government is able to recover money as a result of the lawsuit, Lyttle would receive a portion of it.

The system is intended to help users who are hearing- and speech-impaired. "We will pursue those who seek to gain by knowingly allowing others to abuse this program," said Stuart Delery, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil division.

Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, the government must ensure the availability of telecom relay services allowing the hearing- or speech-impaired in the U.S. to place phone calls. One such service is Internet Protocol Relay.

Richter, the AT&T spokesman, said that "as the FCC is aware, it is always possible for an individual to misuse IP Relay services, just as someone can misuse the postal system or an email account, but FCC rules require that we complete all calls by customers who identify themselves as disabled."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to AT&T sued over calls for deaf
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0323/AT-T-sued-over-calls-for-deaf
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe