Two Utah men will appear in a Hawaii federal court May 19 on four indictments issued by a Honolulu grand jury in a nationwide crackdown on telephone access code thefts.
Richard T. Denning, 65, Murray, and John Fechser, 55, Provo, appeared Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Calvin Gould in Salt Lake City on charges of conspiracy to steal and market long distance distribution networks.
Both waived removal and Gould immediately set the hearing date before a federal magistrate in Hawaii. They are free on $2,500 personal recognizance bonds.
Denning and Fechser, who were arrested Monday by the Secret Service, were among 18 others nationwide indicted by the grand jury. The indictments allege the defendants acquired unauthorized long distance telephone credit card numbers and access codes and used and marketed those codes to defraud long distance telephone companies, Utah U.S. Attorney Brent Ward said.
The arrests culminated an eight-month undercover operation by the Honolulu Secret Service office into the wholesale marketing of the codes. The agents made more than 600 undercover telephone contacts with people involved in marketing the codes and received from the defendants more than 600 unauthorized access codes, Ward said.