Conmen add charges to thousands of phone bills

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- Here is one more reason why you should check your phone bill carefully.

"You'd have to be a genius to figure out all the taxes and numbers on here, said Clark Beerman, fraud victim. "This one particular item kept showing up. This is where I found the charge they were sticking on my bill."

The charge was buried below taxes and fees -- and for most people who got targeted in this scam it ranged from around $13 to $40. For Beermann the charge was on the phone bill for his business.

"In this case there were tens of thousands of cramming victims and losses totaled over $22 million," said Andrew Wang, US Postal Inspector.

Two scam artists, working thru a middle man, told phone companies that various consumers and businesses had agreed to pay a monthly fee for their service. But Wang said they were perpetrating a false billing scheme -- billing people who never ordered their service.

The scam is called telephone cramming. Wang describes it as: "The placement of unauthorized charges on to a consumer or business's telephone bill."

The victims, most of whom never noticed the charge, included thousands of business owners like Clark Beerman who eventually complained to their phone company. Those complaints ended up in the hands of U.S. Postal Inspectors who busted the operation.

Two brothers pulled off this scheme. One was convicted of mail fraud and money laundering and sentenced to 30 months behind bars.