Five people were charged Friday with running a scheme using bogus dial tones to steal telephone calling card numbers from travelers at major U.S. airports, including Chicago and Houston.
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Federal authorities said some 47 phone carriers were affected by the scheme and losses could be in the millions of dollars. AT&T, Bell Atlantic and MCI cooperated in the investigation, prosecutors said.According to charges filed in Manhattan federal court, the defendants were able to dupe unsuspecting callers by generating false dial tones on airport pay phones. They then recorded the tones as victims punched their card numbers into the phones.