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Verizon Wireless Files Lawsuit Against SMS Defrauders

Mar 9, 2011, 2:39 PM by Eric M. Zeman
updated Mar 9, 2011, 3:20 PM

Verizon Wireless today announced that it has filed a lawsuit in Phoenix, Ariz., against several individuals and entities in order to break up a fraudulent Premium SMS operation. The lawsuit, which names Jason Hope and Wayne P. DeStefano and companies they own, including Cylon, Jawa and EyeLevel Holdings, alleges that the defendants circumvented Verizon's policies regarding Premium SMS services and misappropriated approved short codes for unapproved campaigns. Verizon also alleges that the defendants blocked select IP addresses, redirected visitors to shell web sites, and attempted to hide the existence of the scheme from Verizon's normal auditing processes. Verizon is seeking an injunction to stop Hope and DeStefano from defrauding Verizon and its customers, in addition to compensation.

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Comments

This forum is closed.

This forum is closed.

dshearn

Mar 12, 2011, 5:45 PM

as an employee of a Cellphone company.... NO company should be able to attach to your bill.

I hate the concept as a customer and as an employee.....

Your cell phone bill should be CLOSED to outside companys....

I cant understand the concept of ALLOWING a company to bill your customers for somehting that MIGHT or might not have been click at the wrong time....

jayizilly

Mar 9, 2011, 5:46 PM

About time

Services like these are just horrible.
I never understood how a third party could simple attach themselves to your bill.

RobbieJnn

simple, when you click 'accept' or 'continue'

thats unless your a customer...then you NEVER push those buttons apparently 🙄

...

CellStudent

These services need to be opt-in instead of opt-out. They need to be completely blocked by default unless requested- like having international roaming enabled on a phone.

...

callcenterrep69

Well...yes and no. I'll give you an example. I've had 5 active lines on T-Mo for over 6 years now and the ONLY times I've ever had an anonymous third party subscription added to any of my lines is when one of us stupidly provided our number to any oth...
(continues)

jskrenes

Mar 10, 2011, 10:51 AM

Has anybody actually used premium SMS?

I deal with customers every day who have no idea how they got those pesky charges, it's bad enough that every customer I deal with, if they don't have premium SMS blocked, I block for them as a courtesy (of course I tell them I am doing so). In the two years I've been doing this, I have encountered one customer who wanted the service.

So I throw down a challenge here: other than donating to the Red Cross (which if you're going to do, you could write them a check) via SMS, who here has used and would want to keep premium SMS?

Overmann

Mar 10, 2011, 10:26 AM

Block Premium SMS

If you never use "Premium SMS" (billing through SMS) you always have had the option to add this one feature. It's like installing a Firewall on your computer. Do you really need all those TCP and UDP ports open, waiting for some random scareware to come hijack your system with ease?

MadFatMan

Mar 10, 2011, 1:00 AM

OMG! This Is Devastating!

Could this possibly limit or eliminate altogether our ability as consumers to purchase and subscribe to substandard ring tones, worthless alerts, sexy messages from a computer server it some fat guy in Omaha, breaking celebrity gossip and news that is actually 2 weeks old, generalized horoscope that I can interpret as if they were customized and pulled out of a celestial body by way of my cell phone, Leisure Suit Larry Caliber pick up lines awww man say it ain't so. I am going to truly miss these random $9.99 charges on my bill and calling my wireless provider for a credit to my bill. Awww shucks!

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