14 DAY TRIAL // To his immense surprise, a Winnipeg businessman, named Alan Davison, was announced that he was due to pay a $52.000 bill for calls made abroad in less than a month. As he declared and as most believe, the calls, to Bulgaria, were made after his voice mail system was hacked.
Since the bill displays a monstrous amount of money, it's easy to imagine how many calls the hacker made. Also, the problem was first spotted by Davison himself, the owner of HUB Computer Solutions, when his phone started displaying the “feature 36” message on the screen. Since he had never seen such a message, he contacted Manitoba Telecom Services (MTS), the operating company, which informed him of the bill and also of the payment due data.
Of course, after this fraud was reported, MTS sent Davison a protection guide for his company's long-distance call option. The operator stated that it would take responsibility for the illegal act, should experts consider that the company's equipment was to blame for this bypassing. In other words, there is a slim possibility that Davison's bill will be reduced or eliminated.
Here are the official declarations of the two parts, to better shape both points of view. Davison's statement says that “If I have to pay that whole bill out of my own pocket, I'm looking at having to lay off one of my employees[...]It's quite obvious something was right out of whack. There were hundreds of phone calls.''
On the other side we have the statement coming from MTS, made by Greg Burch, official spokesman, “If there is an instance of fraud, we're going to take a look at that and that might include reducing or eliminating the charges[..]If it's an instance where it's your own equipment, you've purchased third-party equipment, you're responsible for that equipment and for securing that equipment.''
Anyway, the point Davison is later on trying to make is that the company should have at least let him know about the changes regarding the long-distance calls, considering that this was not something that happened regularly.
This incident is not an isolated one; such illegalities take place all over the world, but since there is no real supervising done by the operating companies or by the law-enforcement agencies, such situations cannot be avoided. Moreover, most of the victims of such acts, after trying to receive justice in court, did not even get a quarter of the amount of money they were forced to pay. For now, such criminal acts remain unpunished and keep the customers living in fear.