Electronic Theft Used For 150 Phone Sex Calls

Someone has been illegally using credit card numbers to make more than 150 calls to telephone sex lines, Coeur d’Alene police said Monday.

And it appears that all the calls - worth more than $6,000 - have been made from a Coeur d’Alene motel during the past two weeks.

No one has been arrested, said Coeur d’Alene police Capt. Carl Bergh. But police are working with a private investigator for a credit card processing center.

Art Shrader, the investigator, reported the thefts to Coeur d’Alene police on Friday.

He believes the thief was able to steal MasterCard numbers from the Internet, according to a police report. Shrader told police that a special program uses a mathematical formula to get the account numbers from the worldwide computer network.

The person then used the credit card numbers to make more than 150 calls to phone sex numbers in Colorado, Bergh said.

It appears all the calls were made from the State Motel on Sherman Avenue starting in mid-July, according to a trace done by AT&T.

Most were made between midnight and 2 a.m., Shrader told police.

Ann Koegan said there was a suspicious person staying in the motel mostly during June.

But “in July, I can’t think of anyone who would have done anything like that,” she said Monday. “There were some people here for the month, but I don’t think it would have been them.”

, DataTimes