Released: November 29, 2006

Cell phone fraud is phone owner’s nightmare

Source: David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle

Let’s say your cell phone gets lost or stolen. And let’s say somebody runs up some serious charges on your account.

What happens next?

Alameda [California] resident Rich Saskal received his monthly bill from T-Mobile last week and discovered more than $600 in charges to Colombia over a nearly 24-hour period after his cell phone went missing in October.

“I was stunned,” he told me. “My heart almost stopped beating when I saw this.”

And Saskal, 38, can consider himself lucky. Some wayward cell phones result in charges of as much as $50,000, according to Jeff Brown, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission.

“It’s a big problem,” Brown said. “Some cases we’ve seen have been just extraordinary.”

But here’s the kicker: Unlike lost or stolen credit cards, for which issuers will typically eat most if not all fraudulent charges, calls rung up on lost or stolen cell phones will usually be the responsibility of the account holder.

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