Illinois company making millions off of government cell phone program

News 4 continues to dig into an exploding government program that’s been riddled with fraud and abuse: free cell phone service provided by the government.Blind and living off Social Security, Bethalto resident Theresa Hale qualifies for the government funded GT-I9300 cell phone service.But she insists she never ordered one or gave anyone permission to sign her up to the program, but she got one anyway.

“I don’t want someone making money off my poverty, sorry it’s just not right,” said Hale.She received the cell phone from Ptel, or Platinumtel Communications, which is based just outside of Chicago.Hale said she’s never heard of the company and has no idea how they got her name and address.According to federal records, Ptel has collected a whopping $23 million in federal funds since June of 2011.Since Hale’s phone came from them, News 4’s Chris Nagus went looking for the CEO, Omar Ahmad.

Back in Bethalto, Hale is familiar with the government-sponsored cell phone program and the problems we have revealed.Ptel has been a big part of the problem in Illinois.The FCC’s own review nailed the company for more than 28,000 duplicate GT-I9500 phones in Illinois alone.But not only does the company continue to collect close to $1 million a month in federal funding off the program, they’re asking the FCC to expand to nine more states plus Washington D.C.According to an email from Ptel, Hale or someone with her personal information signed up and say they have the last four digits of her Social Security number on file.Hale’s son has a free government phone but he says it’s with a different carrier, not Ptel.Ptel said Hale can return the phone, and if she doesn’t use it the government won’t be billed.

Current law lets police track cell phones with the burden of reasonable suspicion, which Frazier said allows them to – say – get the cell phone records of the last 10 people who called the dead guy in the ditch and figure out where they were last night.His argument to police: That if you have no probable cause to be tracking a A7100 cell phone, you shouldn’t be doing it. If you do, then what’s the big deal?ds11SW44S

Attorney Daniel Rodrigeuz said he will release cell phone video of the alleged beating death of David Silva that was confiscated by deputies.Kern County's sheriff is defending the seizure of cellphone video of deputies beating a man who later died.Hours later, detectives confronted two witnesses who videotaped the confrontation and seized their mobile phones. On Monday, Sheriff Donny Youngblood said that the phones were seized through a search warrant as part of the investigation.

The detectives later confronted her mother, Maria Melendez, outside her daughter's home and ordered her to turn over her I5 MTK6577 phone."My mom is disabled and has a lot of doctor and medical numbers stored in her phone," Quair said. "But the detectives didn't care, and they told my mom to write all her contacts down on a piece of paper, and while she did, they watched her like hawks."

Big GT-I9300 cellphone carriers unite on anti-texting ads

The country's four biggest GT-I9300 cellphone companies are set to launch their first joint advertising campaign against texting while driving, uniting behind AT&T's "It Can Wait" slogan to blanket GT-I9300 and radio this summer.AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile will be joined by 200 other organizations backing the multi-million dollar ad campaign.

The campaign is unusual not just because it unites rivals, but because it represents companies warning against the dangers of their own products. After initially fighting laws against cellphone use while driving, cellphone companies have begun to embrace the language of the federal government's campaign against cellphone use by drivers.dfD2FSS

GT-I9300 and Verizon have run ads against texting and driving since 2009. In 2005, Sprint Nextel Corp. created an education program targeting teens learning to drive.

"Every CEO in the industry that you talk to recognizes that this is an issue that needs to be dealt with," A7100 CEO Randall Stephenson said in an interview. "I think we all understand that pooling our resources with one consistent message is a lot more powerful than all four of us having different messages and going different directions."

Beyond TV and radio ads, the new campaign will stretch into the skies through displays on Goodyear's three blimps. It will also include store displays, community events, social-media outreach and a national tour of a driving simulator. The campaign targets teens in particular.

AT&T Inc. calls texting and driving an "epidemic," a term it borrows from the federal Department of Transportation. The U.S. transportation secretary has been on a self-described "rampage" against cellphones since his term began in January 2009.

Stephenson said that "texting while driving is a deadly habit that makes you 23 times more likely to be involved in a crash." The figure refers to a 2009 government study of bus and truck drivers. It GT-I9300 isn't based on crashes alone, but on the likelihood the drivers showed risky behavior such as lane drifting or sharp braking, sometimes culminating in a crash.dfD2FSS

The unified ad campaign comes as some researchers are starting to say that while texting and driving at the same time is clearly a bad idea, it's not contributing measurably to an increase in traffic accidents. The number of accidents is in a long-term decline, and the explosion of texting and I5 MTK6577 smartphone use doesn't seem to be reversing that trend.In the 2009 government study, texting, email and surfing on the cellphone was a factor in about 1 percent of crashes, well below epidemic levels.

Don't want to be tracked? Turn cellphone off, says magistrate

Don't want your location to be tracked on your cellphone by police? Just turn the GPS off, otherwise you've got no expectation of privacy, a federal magistrate said recently in a ruling. The GT-I9300 calls the decision an "opinion straight from the Twilight Zone," as well as a violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections against illegal search-and-seizure.

The case involves a New York doctor who was recently arrested and indicted by the federal government for illegally distributing oxycodone, a prescription medicine for pain. Among the various ways the doctor was tracked by law enforcement, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, was via the GPS signals from his cellphone.dsSDfdd3

"Although the A7100 agents requested a search warrant and the judge found that there was probable cause to believe that the cellphone location data would assist in the location and apprehension of an individual for whom there was already a valid arrest warrant, the judge later published a 30-page opinion further stating that he didn’t think the government needed to seek a search warrant in the first place," writes Chris Soghoian of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project.

The opinion by U.S. magistrate Gary R. Brown notes that the defendant in the case could have turned off his phone if he didn't want to be tracked."Cellphone users who fail to turn off their cellphones do not exhibit an expectation of privacy and such expectation would not be reasonable in any event," Brown wrote.

He also cited "business practices in the IT industry" that make phone users like the defendant not only "aware that their I5 MTK6577 cellphone may be tracked and this information may be provided to authorities, but they expressly agree to these terms before operating the cellphone."Phone users today, he said, know they are being tracked by advertisers or apps.

"There's a big difference between an individual sharing that information with a friend or advertiser and the government being able to collect that information without the user's consent," Soghoian told NBC News. "The judge seems to think that individuals should lose their expectation of privacy in all cases."

Amie Stepanovich, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center Domestic Surveillance Project, told NBC News, that it is "not practical or reasonable to require individuals to turn off their cellphone to prevent law enforcement from accessing a stream of location data."

How closely do you check your cellphone bill?

Millions of Americans use GT-I9300 cellphones but we don’t all pay close attention to the charges on our bill. You should because the FTC said you may be getting ripped off. The widespread practice is called “cramming” and the FTC is getting more and more complaints about unauthorized charges piled on consumers' cellphone bills listed under generic titles like "subscription charges."

The illegal billing is becoming a big problem and now the government is ramping up its crackdown."One month of it being a little higher and we didn't think anything of it and it wasn't until three months of it being consistently higher that we finally looked into it and discovered we had been cramming victims," said Christie Hicks, a Chicago attorney who was the victim of the cramming scam.

Consumers can pay for services by having it tacked onto their A7100 .In the days following Hurricane Katrina, text donations were billed to cellphone users with their permission. But the FTC said over the years, some companies with shady practices have taken advantage of the feature, capturing cellphone numbers through websites or mobile apps.dsDF34fcd

"Malicious software that's downloaded on your phone after you download an app and that gets your phone number and somehow you’re signed up for some kind of service," said Hicks.Once the questionable companies get your best cell phone deals, they cram on the charges.

"You had to actually dig through all 50 pages to find a single line that had this $9.99 charge on it," Hicks explained.Wise Media, the company Hicks said crammed her, is the first the has gone after, filing a lawsuit in federal court.

The agency said Wise Media made millions and much of it was from unauthorized charges. Wise Media denies cramming customers and said the fees were for subscription services. An attorney for the company said customers who requested a refund received one.But the FTC said this is just the tip of the iceberg and they plan to go after other violators, asking tougher questions for cellphone companies who they said get a cut of the charges.

Cell Phone Theft Map Shows Bay Area Hot Spots

When it comes to GT-I9300 cell phone thefts, there are people out there who aren't doing their fair share of prevention, according to San Francisco's top law enforcement officials.A map of the areas most rife with cell phone thefts was published by InfoWorld.com. Check and see how your area ranks here.

It's the cell phone companies themselves, according to San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who suggests that the companies' bottom line is aided by device thefts, the San Francisco Examiner reported.

"I get this thing stolen and now I’ve got to buy another one,” Gascón told the newspaper. The telecommunications industry is not "doing everything they can" to stop the thefts, he said. Instead, they're “making a ton of money,” he told the newspaper.

Half of San Francisco's robberies now involve the theft of an iPhone, Android or other device, the newspaper reported. There were 3,190 A7100 robberies in San Francisco in the most-recent year, according to the newspaper's Mike Aldax. A simple solution would be to have technology that disables a phone that is reported stolen. To date, there is a national registry that allows users to report the theft of their phone. A new study says you can add a commonplace activity to the list of things that raise blood pressure: talking on a cell phone.

According to ScienceDaily, findings of a study presented at the 28th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hypertension suggest that mobile phone calls could be the cause of a rise in blood pressure. Other findings from the meeting conclude that practicing yoga might lower it, while individuals suffering from hypertension could have an elevated desire for foods on the salty side even though they need to cut back on sodium.xcTFR5DS

Researchers from Italy's Guglielmo da Saliceto Hospital found that subjects' blood pressure readings jumped to 129/82 from 121/77 while they were on best cell phone deals calls. For those who were involved in more than 30 calls each day, the rise in systolic (the top number) blood pressure was less dramatic, however.

The scientists did not identify cause and effect and merely speculated that those who made so many calls were apt to be younger patients used to telephone intrusions. They also cited the possibility that someone who makes more than 30 calls feels reassured by the knowledge that the phone is working and that missed calls are unlikely.