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The Cram Artists

Customer Rep Rejects Her Telephone Bill-Cramming Past

By Joseph S. Enoch
ConsumerAffairs.com

November 27, 2006

The Cram Artists • How Congressionally-Sanctioned Crooks Scam Consumers • Customer Rep Rejects Her Bill-Cramming Past • NWNT: Crammed with Good Intentions? • You've Been Crammed -- Now What? --- Earlier Stories • Congress, Feds Sleep While Cramming Charges Afflict Thousands • Florida Seeks Nationwide Telephone Billing Probe • Florida Opens "Cramming" Probe • Cramming Hits Consumers When They Least Expect It • Spitzer Wins Cramming Concessions from Verizon • Mobsters Charged in Cramming Scheme • FTC Opens Hotline for Epixtar Victims --- • ILD Teleservices • Zero Plus Dialing

With the cold steel of a pistol in her mouth, "Frankie" Molarius was in physical and mental pain. She was broke and, most of all, she was tired of helping to rip off thousands of American consumers.

She looked down and saw her three dogs -- the dogs she kept for protection against intruders. In the end, the dogs protected her from herself. She realized she didn't want to abandon them, and slowly took the gun out of her mouth.

Molarius had spent the past three and a half years stonewalling consumers who had called to complain of charges that had been "crammed" onto their phone bills. As she put the gun away, she decided the only way she could go on living was to fight the cram-scam artists instead of helping them rip off innocent Americans.

Cramming is big business, created by Congressional passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Instead of opening the telecommunications business to competitive new services, as Congress supposedly intended, the provision that legalized cramming has opened the telephone network to scam artists of every description.

At ConsumerAffairs.com, we log thousands of complaints from consumers about illegal charges being "crammed" onto their phone bills. We read about how, when they call to get the charges removed, customer service representatives (CSRs) procrastinate, obfuscate and even lie in an effort to keep the charges intact.

Of course, what we don't know is what the CSRs are looking at on their computer screens and the scripts they are following -- the scripts they hope will trick the consumer into believing the charges are valid.

That was Molarius's job. She was a CSR for the Northwest Nevada Telephone Company (NWNT) in Reno, Nevada, for three and a half years.

It didn't take Molarius long to realize what she was doing. But she kept quiet because she had seen so many of her coworkers fired for asking too many questions. However, she kept her eyes and ears open, learning as much as she could about what really was going on at NWNT.

NWNT is what's called a third-party biller. It processes charges from supposed "service providers" and puts them on the consumer's local monthly phone bill. NWNT's "clients" -- the service providers whose charges it processes -- include such noteworth companies as:

• USP&C, a cramming scheme tied by the FBI and federal prosecutors to the Gambino organized crime family;

• Alyon, which in 2004 agreed to drop its claim to approximately $17 million in consumer bills to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it engaged in unauthorized billing and collection for adult videotext services supposedly accessed on the Internet by hundreds of thousands of consumers;

• USBI, which earlier this year settled allegations that it placed unauthorized international call charges on Pennsylvania consumers' telephone bills;

• One Call, also implicated in the Pennsylvania scheme; and

• ZPDI, the source of hundreds of consumer complaints alleging excessive charges for long-distance, collect and pay phone calls.

Consumers tend to trust their local phone companies and often pay the bills without scrutinizing them carefully. Those who notice something wrong can call the 800 number that appears next to the charge. When they do, they get Molarius or someone similar.

"People would call us screaming," Molarius said. "They would curse at us because they said they didn't generate those charges."

Frankie Molarius

It was Molarius' job to try and work with the customer and most of all, to get them to agree to accept the charge. NWNT's clients did not care about satisfying long-term customers. They just wanted the money.

One NWNT memo Molarius received read, "Remember: Attempt to sustain the credit on every call you receive. After you tell the customer what the charge is for, offer to block the phone number from any further access to our clients' services."

According to Molarius and four other ex-employees who asked not to be named in this story, virtually everyone who called did so to dispute the charges. Rarely did any caller actually claim to be a legitimate customer with questions about the services.

No matter what the customer said, the CSRs were to follow scripts and at almost all costs, avoid canceling the charge, Molarius and the others said.

However, if customers threatened to complain to authorities or their local exchange carrier (LEC), such as Verizon or BellSouth, they would normally be given a credit.

According to one script, if after receiving a block on their phone line the customer says, "I'll just call my phone company" or "I'll be contacting the FCC, etc.," the CSR is to respond with: "Even though the call was traced to your line, I am authorized to issue a one-time courtesy credit," the ex-employees said.

"Most of the CSRs in the office would get upset because of all the terrible things the customers would say to them," Molarius said. "But it rarely bothered me. I would be upset if I were being scammed, too."

Harsh Words, Harsh Effects

Although Molarius brushed off the harsh words, she could not brush off the harsh effects of her job. Molarius said she frequently would be forced get people in trouble because she was following the script.

"Many times there would be children screaming in the background: 'I didn't do it!' 'I don't know what this is!' 'Mommy, it wasn't me!'" Molarius said. "But I had to follow the script and ask, 'Do you have any children? Could your husband or wife possibly have accessed this?'"

Since much of the content provided by NWNT's clients was pornographic or "adult" in nature, the effects could be devastating. Molarius said she even, presumably, got people fired and divorced.

"Often businesses would call asking about the charges on their bills and I would have to ask, 'Do you have nighttime janitors or security?'" Molarius said.

If the CSRs could convince the customer that the charges were legitimate, they would not have to give a credit or even place a block on the phone line, she said.

Throughout all this, Molarius and the other CSRs had their own problems with NWNT. They were constantly being pitted against each other and, according to Molarius and others, asked to falsify documents so that employees could be fired without any legal recourse.

Within a few months of starting her job at NWNT, Molarius claims that Darr Coleman, a supervisor who manages the CSRs, asked her to falsify documents against another employee.

Molarius refused and this immediately put her at odds with Coleman and the rest of NWNT's management, she said.

This friction between herself and the company continued when Molarius' numbers of sustained charges began to decrease dramatically. She learned that if she let them rant, customers would eventually say the magic words that allowed her to offer a credit. She also would emphasize certain words within the limited script to try and lead the customer into threatening to contact the authorities.

"Sometimes they would catch on. Sometimes they wouldn't," Molarius said.

Meanwhile, Molarius was suffering from a severe back condition that left her nearly paralyzed from the waist down, she said. She wanted to quit her job at NWNT, but with a possible major medical procedure on the horizon, she couldn't afford to.

Molarius was experiencing tingling and numbing sensations in her lower body. Those sensations soon grew into tremendous shooting pain which she said made it difficult to walk and to sit for long periods of time. Ex-employees recall having to help Molarius to her feet.

Multiple MRIs on her spine revealed that she had severe spinal canal problems that could lead to a paralytic condition. They also found a herniated disc and a handful of other spine problems.

Molarius had suffered from spinal conditions earlier in life, but was allowed to use a special orthopedic chair, prescribed for her in 2000, in previous workplaces. But NWNT's Coleman refused to let her use the chair, Molarius said.

ConsumerAffairs.com spoke to Coleman, who denied that she had forbidden Molarius to use her special chair. Coleman then said that Molarius was "faking" her symptoms. Other ex-employees confirmed that Molarius was not allowed to bring in her chair because, in their opinion, the company was trying to make an example of her.

Molarius provided ConsumerAffairs.com with four doctor's letters. One states, "Please allow Molarius to use her orthopedic chair due to her back condition."

Battle Royal

The harrassment got worse, Molarius said. If she stood up to stretch, a simple infrequent action required for her spinal conditions, Coleman would quickly scold her and tell her to sit back down.

Molarius came to the conclusion that the company was looking for any way to get rid of her.

"I think everybody knew management treated Molarius different than any other employee," said Buddy Sheets, a former employee who agreed to have his name published. "I believe that they kept her employed so long because they did not pay her overtime. They could manipulate her through the physical pain she had to endure and her desperation to remain employed."

"Telco (NWNT) would punish her by writing her up or threatening to fire her," Sheets said. "They hated her knowledge of their system and if they hadn't had her disability to use against her, she would have been fired long before they actually did it."

After working there for three years, Molarius learned when her phone conversations were being recorded because there was a brief pause before the caller would be sent through. Molarius said toward the end of her employment, almost all of her calls were being recorded.

Molarius began receiving vague reprimanding "write-ups" for performing tasks she had been asked to do verbally and through memos, she said. She also was reprimanded for flatly telling a few customers that they had been ripped off.

Meanwhile, she was receiving perfect scores on her employee performance report cards.

Grueling Hours

Because of Molarius' medical condition, she was not to work more than nine hours per day, according to two doctor's notes. However, Coleman kept making Molarius work extended hours, without her orthopedic chair, she said.

When Molarius contested these hours and provided the doctor's note requesting no more than nine hours per day, she was written up for fighting with management. Even after the doctor's note, Molarius was repeatedly forced to work overtime.

To make matters worst, Molarius's cubicle was moved to a place where management could keep an eye on her. Then, according to Molarius and others, Molarius was moved into isolation.

Coleman denied doing that.

Finally, her doctor gave her an ultimatum: quit working or face paralysis.

She called the Social Security office to see if she would qualify to receive her quarterly payments early due to her condition. She would, she was told, but it would take six months to get the paperwork in order.

But, while paralysis was frightening, so was six months without pay. She would lose everything: her house, her land and her dogs.

To make matters worst, she was beginning to fear for her life. After all, NWNT's clients included USP&C, a company that federal prosecutors said was operated by the Gambino crime family. Molarius said that coworkers repeatedly warned her to watch her back.

Molarius decided that her three Huskies would not be enough to protect her should anyone enter her house. So, encouraged by a friend, she purchased a pistol.

She never aimed the pistol at anyone but herself.

Facing the prospect of either being paralyzed or losing all of her belongings, Molarius began to ponder suicide.

On August 5, 2004, while waiting in her neurosurgeon's office, the nurse, sensing that Molarius' emotional state was perilous, asked if she had ever considered suicide. Molarius told her she had. Next thing she knew the police were there to take her away.

Molarius slipped out of the office and drove home. She expected the police to be waiting for her at her home, but no one appeared.

Alone and with tears streaming, Molarius resolved to end her life. She put the gun in her mouth but as she prepared to pull the trigger, her dogs walked over to her to see what was wrong, Molarius said. She realized that if she pulled the trigger, she would be abandoning them.

She decided that the next day she would give her dogs to a shelter and then kill herself.

But before she could do that, she decided she would give life one last chance. She contacted the local mental health office.

That evening, Sharon Reed, a therapist at the mental health office spoke on the phone with Molarius for hours. She listened to her story and decided that the only way Molarius could heal was to fight back against the crammers -- to use the knowledge she gained with her operator headset and inform the country.

Molarius was finally fired in December of 2004 by NWNT for fighting with Coleman over overtime hours. She is now working happily for another company selling tools.

"As far as I'm concerned, I died on August 5," Molarius said. "My purpose now is to expose what the crammers are doing."

Next: NWNT: Crammed With Good Intentions?

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