Upon opening my last Verizon phone bill, I like many others noted a large bill for a single call placed to a blind number in New York City. The bill was appended to my normal phone bill by ZPDI, a clearing house for an long time fraudulant company called Opticom.
This call was placed supposedly on an EARLY (5:20 am
PST) Sunday morning when no one but myself was awake. I was on my way to work, and could not have placed any call.
Interestingly, when I called the number in question, it turned out to be a computer. The bill stated I had placed an "Operator assisted" call to this number.
Upon further investigation, I found that my 12 y/o daughter's computer had been infected with an autodialer that hijacked her modem and dialed this number.
Verizon has "sent back" the charge to ZPDI, however, folks need to be aware that this company has added this illegal and immoral theft of service tactic to it's already extremely shady business practices.
To Avoid this fraud, make sure you have pop-up blocking, virus and malware protection and disconnect your modem when not in use if you have dial-up internet service.
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