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Busted!: Woman charged with online theft |
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By MARILYN FONTENOT,
marilynf@npgco.com
An Atchison County woman was sentenced to a year in jail for Internet fraud Friday in District Court.
District Court Judge Martin Asher suspended Erin Russell’s sentence and placed her on a year’s probation. Atchison County Sheriff’s Deputy Jason Hundly said Ms. Russell signed onto an Internet site and signed up to receive a telephone package using someone else’s phone number.
The package included call-waiting, caller ID, three-way calling and other services for Ms. Russell’s home phone line.
“The case is she checked on a web banner and put another person’s phone number in the billing section,” Deputy Hundly said. “It happens quite a bit.”
Claudena Kay Barnett said when she received her phone bill in February she noticed the charges amounted to nearly $200. She knew the charges didn’t belong to her, so she started making calls to find out what was going on.
“I called Southwestern Bell, then New York, then Florida,” she said. “I called the (Atchison) Police Department first. Then I called the sheriff’s office. Then I called the (Kansas) Attorney General’s office.”
Ms. Russell was charged with theft by deception but those charges were later changed to theft of services, a misdemeanor. She pleaded no contest Friday and was ordered to pay court costs, attorney fees, probation fees and restitution within 30 days. Because she is already on probation on previous charges, Judge Asher agreed for her sentence to run concurrent with her current case. She was also ordered to write a letter of apology to Ms. Barnett.
“I understand she spent a lot of time on the phone talking to phone companies,” Judge Asher said. “You need to give her an apology and restitution for her inconvenience. Her credit was also put in jeopardy.”
Deputy Hundly said the last four digits of the two women’s phone numbers are the same. When Ms. Russell put a phone number for billing on her computer, she changed the prefix to Ms. Barnett’s phone.
Ms. Barnett said since she realized someone else was using her personal information on the Internet, she’s been more careful online. She said she found out a person can actually turn on your computer at home if the phone line is still hooked to it. Now, she said, she not only turns off her computer when she isn’t using it, but she unplugs the phone line.
“I just would like for her to understand that she can’t do this to people,” Ms. Barnett said. “It took me two hours to get the bills straightened out. It was just a big mess.”
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Content © 2003 Atchison Daily Globe
Software © 1998-2003 1up! Software, All Rights Reserved
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