British Phone System Rigged for Free Calls

               From YIPL Issue 15, page 4, Dec 1972

LONDON (AP) -- Police are on the trail of a phantom who rigged a British 
city's telephone exchange so that 2,000 students could make calls over the 
world for free. Government investigators traced the secret wiring in the 
ancient southwest England city of Bath last month.

But they fear the phantom has already wired up other cities foe free calls 
that are costing the Post Office, which operates Britain's telephone system, 
a fortune in lost revenue.

And worse, they believe there may be more than one phantom.

"This is a serious national prolem", a Post Office spokesman said. "We are 
making investigations in other towns all over the country to get to the bottom 
of this fraud."

The Bath affair was the first "dial a diddle" fraud investigators had cracked.

They found that the Kingshead exchange in the historic city, which dates back 
to Roman times, had been illegally wired and that at least 2,000 students at 
the university there knew about it.

Investigators installed a monitor that enabled them to trace the illegal calls 
and trap nine students. Each was fined a nominal two pounds, or $4.70, last 
week for "dishonestly obtaining electricity from the Post Office"

But the university's students and many townspeople knew the special dialing 
code that activated the hook-up to obtain an open line to anywhere in the 
world without the call being registered. Police said the secret ciruit was 
"extensively used". 

The president of the university's Student Union Bill Moger, said: "Just about 
everyone here knew the code".

"It's been going on for a long time and it seems the Post Office is operating 
to try to catch the people responsible for putting it there. But they got the 
wrong people."

Police said there was "insufficient evidence at this stage to estsblish the 
identity of the person or persons responsible."