With a few minutes to spare between planes, a traveler decides to make a quick call to let her family know she is on the way home.
From the corner of one eye, the caller sees a man with a camcorder on his shoulder. As the caller starts to enter her telephone credit card number, the tape starts rolling.
Videotaping of callers at public pay phones is one of the newest ways for thieves to steal credit card numbers from unsuspecting members of the public, long-distance carriers say. Thieves also use binoculars, cameras, computers or plain old persuasion to obtain the numbers.
The Communications Fraud Control Association estimates that credit-card fraud and other types of deceptive practices cost consumers and the telephone industry $500 million a year. The association includes local and long-distance telephone companies, consumer groups and law enforcement agencies.
But Bruce Wells, a senior engineer for MCI Communications, calls the fraud group`s number ”ludicrously low.”
The Secret Service, which has jurisdiction in telephone fraud cases, recently estimated that thieves steal $1.2 billion in telecommunications services each year.
Wells says it`s almost impossible to gauge the extent of phone fraud because telephone companies don`t want to admit how bad the problem is. ”I`m not even sure that the numbers we report internally are right,” he said.
The Secret Service fraud estimate includes calling-card fraud, operator-services fraud, infiltration of privately owned telephone switches and a new scam, subscription fraud.
Calling-card fraud is probably the most common and also one of the oldest forms of phone fraud. But long-distance companies are becoming adept at detecting unauthorized use of calling cards-sometimes even before the cardholder gets a bill.
Most long-distance companies have computer programs that can detect unusual patterns of calling-card use, such as simultaneous use of a card number on several phones, said Myra Devall, director of fraud prevention for US Sprint.
When the companies suspect fraud, they attempt to reach the cardholder to determine whether the calls are legitimate, she said. If they can`t, the carrier can immediately block calls using the stolen card number and give the cardholder a new number.
Long-distance companies also have made calling-card numbers longer. Most have given customers personal identification numbers that aren`t printed on the cards. The longer numbers make it more difficult for computer hackers to crack the codes with automatic dialers, Devall said.
If thieves can`t get the number by spying or hacking, they sometimes simply ask for the numbers.
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In one of the latest scams, thieves call people and identify themselves as a long-distance carrier and say they suspect fraud on a person`s calling card. The thieves then ask for the calling-card number, said Ben Lambeth, a senior investigator for MCI in St. Louis.
A real long-distance carrier would never ask the caller for the card number, Lambeth said. ”We already know your number,” he said. People should never give out the card number to a caller, he added.