Word: phoning
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Odear of High Point, N.C., traded down in life to be a full-time part of the birding world. Once the president and general manager of Wrangler jeans, Odear quit to make "one-third the money" running a birding company called Bob-O-Link and its phone service, the North American Rare Bird Alert. For $25 a year, subscribing birders are given a code name and the right to dial into a tape, changed as often as three times a day, listing the whereabouts of all known rarities in North America...
...phone service has cranked birding competition up a notch. Sandy Komito, 55, owner of a construction company in Haledon, N.J., blames Odear for turning him into a chaser. "Before Bob started the service in January of 1985, I was relatively passive," he says. Komito says he hunts rarities by tacking on a day or two of birding to a legitimate business trip. But when the ruddy ground dove was reported in Texas last November, he was there the next day, with no business trip as an excuse. He expects to fly 300,000 miles on birding trips this year...
...Pssst! Wanna buy a cheap long-distance call?" Words to that effect are now being whispered in the vicinity of telephone booths across the country as part of a scam that costs U.S. phone companies anywhere from $6.5 million to $11 million a year. Hustlers who might once have peddled drugs or sex offer prospective customers cut-rate telephone calls that are placed by using access codes stolen from long-distance phone companies. The most likely buyers: people waiting in urban bus or train terminals, especially immigrants who might want to call a loved one in a foreign land without...
Authorities have rounded up hundreds of phone hustlers around the country in recent months. In New York alone, last year 190 people were arrested for participating in the hot line scam. Three local telephone companies and 20 long-distance carriers, including AT&T, US Sprint and MCI, joined forces to form a group called the Communications Fraud Control Association, which now includes a number of other phone companies. The association's mission: to help crack down on the growing practice by urging tougher laws and stricter law enforcement...
Randi from the Gulls' front office offers to help me. The team's regular public relations man is on the road, leaving Randi and myself to try to unearth Duncan's performance to date over the phone...