PLA Issue #46

Welcome to the 46th issue of PLA. The 46th and the last. Yep, you heard right.
As of this issue the zine has come to a halt forever. I’m really quite bored
with the whole thing and don’t enjoy writing it anymore. I’d toyed around with
the idea of handing it over to someone else but just couldn’t bear to let it
go out of my control. I’m a power-freak, okay??

So remember – 46 is the LAST issue. I fully expect someone to write an issue
47 and claim that we gave them permission to take it over but this won’t
happen. I also won’t change my mind and start it up again so if you see any
issues of PLA after this one (aside from PLA099), it’s a fraud. And you know
how testy we get about fraud. If I ever decide to write anything else, it’ll
be in another zine. A million thanks goes out to everyone who made the zine
what it’s become today. Without the support of the readers and contributers,
we never woulda made it past issue 20.

Don’t fret, though. PLA isn’t dead, just the zine is. You’ll continue to see
PLA GIFs/JPGs occasionally, the web page will always exist and hopefully the
supporting web pages will also. And I don’t think I could ever grow up enough
to quit pranking people until they cried so keep an eye out for a new PLA
prank tape and new sound clips. NewKleer Wynter recently put together a PLA
dance mix called Go Away PLA which can be found on the web page and Calimar is
working on tracking a few PLA mixes of his own. So watch the web page and be
on the lookout for vast improvements and new material. Anyone who contributes
an article to me will have it forwarded to the appropriate e-zine.

And you can still contribute to PLA in other ways. Like the next time you set
fire to a Bell South building, spray paint “PLA” all over the windows first
and the next time you order a custom calling card for your principal, make the
pin number say, “PLA1” and when your neighbors go out of town, mow the words
“PLA” into their lawn and when that cop walks into the donut shop, slap
magnetic cactii all over his patrol car and after class when the bell rings
and students are running out the door like mad, drop PLA marbles all over the
floor to cause a few concussions and don’t forget always annoy the residents
of Roy, New Mexico with silly phone calls and late night fax-backing.

Well, the zine has finally come to an end. RBCP informed me shortly after the
release of PLA045 that this issue would be the last, so I decided to write
this spiffy little farewell to the zine. Yes, the ZINE. A lot of you are
probably sitting there right now saying “holy shit, this is the last issue,
PLA is gone forever, ibaibaibaibaibaibaiba!@#$” or something equally retarded.

Now, just because the zine’s publication has ended doesn’t mean PLA is ‘dead,’
or whatever you want to call it. The website is still up, and RBCP fully plans
on continuing to maintain it (it will probably be moving to a new home soon,
so keep your eyes open). The quarterly phone directory will still be updated
(maybe now that RBCP has quit writing PLA, he’ll finally make that ‘quarterly’
part mean something). I’m sure new PLA photos will appear every now and then,
as well as new prank call WAVs (keep your eyes peeled for the PLA’s new
tape–‘Operator Leaving Line’–coming soon). You’ll still be able to find all
of us PLA contributers and weirdos on EFnet and DALnet’s #rock, so drop in and
say hi every once in awhile.

And there’s always the spiffy Aurora-Magellan: Last of the PLA BBSes
(cal.dbstech.com) run by Calimar and myself (we need users dammit). PLA isn’t
gone–only the zine has been retired. As RBCP puts it, “better to end it now
than to make it suck alot.” If you want to keep contributing to PLA, then go
out and make some calls, send in your stories, or get on IRC and harass some
people. I’m sure RBCP will add some kind of regularly updated PLA newsletter
or fan mail area to his site. RBCP has provided alot of us with many hours of
laughter with his stuff, and will still continue to do so, so keep up the
support, and remember–the PLA still owns you.

–Logic Box (logicbox@usa.net)

Since the disolution of the Phone Losers of America zine, it seems to be the
only course of action to disband the ragtag PLA group. While it always
exsisted (see article), this is one time when it cannot. Personally, I tip my
hat (PLA hat, of course) to RBCP for his years of work and excellent writting.
This is the end of an era. Now all that will be left is silly zines that take
themselves too seriously.

Telecon once told me that the whole reason he was drawn to PLA was the fact
that it never took itself that seriously. Kind of tounge in cheek the whole
ride. I also urge people instead of bothering RBCP asking if they can take it
over, if you really want to have a zine, start your own. PLA is finished and
that is that. I support RBCP and Colleen’s decision to shut it down. If they
want it that way, so be it. While I only wrote for this publication a few
times, I doubt I write for another. So on that note, I bid you farewell.
Transmition ends.

–Apok0lyps

Unless you’ve been living in Emmanuel Goldstien’s basement you’ve probably
heard of Sommy the “Cyberstalker,” a man (or several men?) who for no
apparent reason is turning the lives of an innocent Canadian family into a
living hell. You gotta love this guy.

Supposedly he’s jumping into their phone conversations, switching channels on
their TV set, calling the Canadian police to torment them, switching their
power off and on and tormenting anyone who has any contact with the family.
The guy’s a true Phone Loser. If Mitnick weren’t in jail they’d probably try
to pin this one on him too. Sommy, I have only one thing to say to you – Chris
Tomkinson’s new phone number in Arizona is 602-736-9864.

When I began this article, they hadn’t caught Sommy yet but now they’ve got
him and if you haven’t been following the story, you’ll be surprised at who it
was. Kind of a shitty ending to the whole story but interesting, nontheless.
The following articles were taken from my local newspaper, from e-mail
submissions and from web searches. Mostly they repeat themselves but I’m
printing them all anyways. I tried to keep them as chronologically accurrate
as possible.

Phone line intruder terrorizes family, baffles cops
Taken from the News of the Weird, March 15-17, 1997

WINDSOR, Ont. (CP) – He calls himself Sommy, and he was very busy on Thursday.
After singing nonsense songs and mumbling gibberish into the telephone, Sommy
said he slashed the tires of the police officer who’s trying to catch him. But
he denied being a vampire. “I just told Debbie I was a vampire for a joke,”
Sommy said. “It’s not like I’m sick.”

For more than three months, Debbie Tamai, her husband Dwayne and son Billy
have been tormented by this unknown male who has infiltrated the phone system
of their home in Emeryville, east of Windsor. His method has thus far baffled
the provincial police, Bell Canada investigators and a private U.S. security
firm.

He breaks in on private phone conversations at will to burp, utter silly
phrases and drop chilling little hints of malice that keep the family
constantly on edge. “Sommy told me the other day that he likes the vampire Web
site on the Internet,” Tamai said. “He told me he likes to drink blood.” The
family has no idea who the man who is making their life a living hell.

Sommy, or someone, has cut the family’s outside phone lines at least six
times, usually in broad daylight. Bell Canada has changed the home’s phone
wiring three times, to no avail. The last time the wiring was changed, Sommy
was back on the line within 20 minutes. The house has been scoured for
listening devices from top to bottom. Nothing was found.

Sommy has utter contempt for the police and phone security experts who are
trying to stop him. When an investigating officer had his tires slashed, Sommy
took credit for it. He openly gloats about how he has frustrated the police.
“They won’t catch me,” Sommy said at one point. “I’m too smart.”

Sgt. Ron Lane admits Sommy has them stumped. “We think he’s talking through
his computer, garbling his voice,” Lane said. “He knows exactly what he’s
doing. Twenty-one years in the police service, and I’ve never had a case like
this.”

Billy is so used to Sommy that he completely ignores his interruptions during
phone conversations, talking around the rambling metallic chatter. If Sommy
swears while Billy is on the phone, Tamai will grab the receiver and scold him
for using foul language around her son. She said Sommy usually apologizes.

“He’s a definite presence here,” Tamai said. “It’s like having a ghost in the
house. I used be comfortable walking around wearing a nightgown, but now I
always have a jogging suit on. I feel like I’m being watched all the time.”

Police have a sketchy profile of Sommy. He is believed to be between 17 and 24
years old and fresh from a bad relationship. He has a strong desire for
control. Sommy has also revealed to Tamai that he is gay. Psychologist Dr.
Barry Taub says the situation is dangerous. “He’s a very powerful force in
that house,” he said. “He’s likely brilliant and craves attention, control and
maybe even an affectionate response. I wouldn’t respond to him at all.”

Tamai has asked Sommy when he is going to stop invading her phone line. “It’s
our phone line,” he said.

Taken from the Nando Times, April 11, 1997:

EMERYVILLE, Ontario — Authorities say they’re baffled by a high-tech harasser
who has been tormenting an Ontario family for months, tinkering with their
electricity and disrupting their phone calls.

Since December, the Tamai family’s phone has been tapped, calls have been
interrupted by strange voices and power to the home is sometimes cut off. The
electronic intruder, who distorts his voice with the help of a computer, calls
himself Sommy and has even been able to switch channels on the family’s
television.

This week, Debbie and Dwayne Tamai and their 15-year-old son decided to make
their plight public, hoping to produce new leads and put more pressure on
investigators to solve the case. “It’s probably falling in to what Sommy
wants, but the only way to get the investigation going is to bring as much
attention to it as possible,” said the family’s lawyer, Don Tait.

Ontario’s attorney general, Bob Runciman, said he has been assured that
police and telephone company officials are doing everything possible to catch
Sommy. Debbie Tamai received 32 calls from the media Tuesday, including one
from the TV tabloid show Inside Edition. “We wanted to go public so we could
get some help for our problem, but we never expected this,” she said.

The investigation has included extensive interviews with neighbors, friends
and close scrutiny of the Tamai family. They’ve been cleared as suspects, and
the house has been rewired three times. Sommy’s identity and method of
infiltration has frustrated police specialists. Experts from the phone
company, electric company and Canada’s industry ministry have joined in the
investigation, but without success.

Electronically barging on to someone’s phone line is a technological piece of
cake but avoiding capture is much stickier, say computer experts and hackers.
“Hacking into a phone conversation isn’t difficult if the intruder has gotten
into Bell Canada’s (computer) system,” said Derek Atkins, a computer security
worker. What has Atkins and other experts stymied about “Sommy’s”
cyber-haunting of a Windsor family is how he’s evaded detection.

A telephone security expert said someone can invisibly access another Bell
Canada line from a nearby site on the same “local loop.” But if the intruder
goes through one of the computerized switches that link neighborhoods, Bell
Canada will trap their number “instantaneously,” said the expert, who asked
not to be named.

Dave Rider

Prankster Dubbed ‘Cyber-Stalker’ by Steve Silberman, 16.Apr.97.PDT:

This week’s nail-biter about information age terrorism – a story of a Canadian
family threatened by a “high-tech stalker” with the power to change channels
on the family TV set, turn lights off and on, and eavesdrop on conversations –
was spun out of verified incidents of prank phone calls and cut phone lines, a
spokesperson for the Ontario Provincial Police says.

Though Reuters ran the story with the headline “Cyberpunk Terrorizes Canadian
Family,” the Net is not involved in the investigation at all, the OPP’s Deb
Mineau told Wired News. The tale of a disembodied prankster calling himself
“Sommy” broke in a small-town newspaper called The Windsor Star over a month
ago, but it captured the attention of the international wire services and the
Canadian Broadcast Corporation after the Toronto Sun ran it on its front page
on 9 April, terming “Sommy” a “cyber-stalker” and “high-tech bogeyman” who was
“cyber-haunting” the family of Debbie and Dwayne Tamai.

The UK-based Fortean Times On-Line posted the story to alt.misc.forteana with
the lead-in “If there was ever an Internet story, that can be solved by
Internet users, this is it.” The Tamai family claims that “Sommy” is able to
listen to their conversations through telephones that are not in use, control
electrical power to their house, and interrupt phone calls with threatening
messages in a computer-generated voice.

John Peck of Bell Canada told Wired News that his company is “taking the
problem very seriously,” and has assigned telecom security experts to the
case. Deb Mineau of the OPP says that though the story has received more
attention than ever in the past two weeks, the Tamais haven’t heard from
“Sommy” since 31 March. Amid speculations by a retired Mountie of “an
invisible device” implanted in the walls of the family home, Debbie Tamai told
the The Toronto Sun, “My biggest fear is that he’ll disappear without a trace
.. (and) we’ll never know how he did it.”

Seen in San francisco examiner on 18 April 1997:

Emeryville, Ontario The couple who claim their home has been haunted by a
high-tech stalker who eavesdrops on their phone lines and changes the channel
on their television have put their three-bedroom house on the market.

“We just want to get out of here and start over somewhere else,” said Debbie
Tamai, whose family has been troubled by a stalker called Sommy who taps into
phone lines, turns power outlets off and on, and has threatened them.

After weeks of being courted by the media and having crowds drive by to gawk
at their house, the family said they want to go back to living anonymously.

Police, Bell Canada and Ontario Hydro investigators have failed to pinpoint
the source of the trouble.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Wednesday, April 16, 1997

Emeryville, Ontaria – The trouble began in December when puzzled friends told
Debbie and Dwayne Tamai their telephone calls to the couple were repeatedly
being waylaid and cut off.

A month later, missed messages and strange clickings seemed minor when a
disembodied voice, eerily distored by computer, first interrupted a call to
make himself known. After burping repeatedly, the called told a startled
Debbie, “I know who you are. I stole your voice mail.”

Mocking, sometimes menacing, the high tech stalker has become a constant
presence, eavesdropping on family conversations, switching TV channels,
shutting off electricity and totally baffling the electronics experts
trying to track his mischief.

He calls himself “Sommy.” The Tamais’ and the police don’t have a clue who
Sommy is, how he does it or why he has targeted this family. “He told me I can
get the best people in the world to come in my home and they won’t find
anything,” Debbie said….”I just want my life back.”

Debbie thinks Sommy rigged their home while it was being built last year,
intending to torment whoever moved in. Initally, Sommy’s interference was
mostly annoying. Then his harrassment turned sinister.

“He would threaten me,” Debbie said, “It was frightening: ‘I’m going to get
you, I know where you live.’ “I befriended him, because the police asked me
to, and he calmed down and said he wasn’t going to hurt me. The more I
felt I was kissing his butt, the safer I felt.”

But never completely safe, he has made clear he listens to family talks
through household telephones, even when the recievers hung up. “When I
want to have a private conversation, I unplug the phone, but we still
whisper.” She says. Police think Sommy lives in the area and is younger than
25. He bragged that police came and went from his house in a door to door
sweep.

Some private experts have tried to uncover Sommy, including Doug Ralph, a
retired electronci surveillance expert. he concluded Sommy was accessing the
Tamais’ house through either underground cables or the nearby Bell Canada
wiring station.

Bell Canada has rewired the house several times. Each time, Sommy was able to
get back on the line, once within 20 minutes. “I hope he gets caught, I hope
they throw the book at him,” Debbie Tamai said. “I’d like to look him in the
eyes, and let him know what he has done to me and my family.”

Cyber-Stalker Update, April 10, 1997

WINDSOR, Ontario — The owner of a high-tech toy store in Detroit says he’s
close to catching a cyber spook haunting a Windsor, Ontario-area family.

Donald Dickson of “Dreams to Reality” says he has an idea who Sommy is, but he
wants to eliminate all possibilities before revealing more. Debbie and Dwayne
Tamai and their 15-year-old son Billy live in Emeryville.

Their phone calls have been interrupted by strange voices, the power to their
home has been turned off and back on, and their T-V mysteriously changes
channels. Sommy has also admitted to slashing the tires of an investigating
officer’s car.

Several experts have checked the home for hidden devices but have found none.
Doug Ralph, a retired R-C-M-P officer, believes that during construction of
the home someone put an invisible device into the walls.

April 11, 1997 – EMERYVILLE — A security expert says the high-tech stalker
who has tormented a family near Windsor might be trying to discredit
authorities. Someone named “Sommy” has been interrupting telephone calls,
cutting power and turning the house appliances on and off for several months.

Retired R-C-M-P officer Doug Ralph of Comsec Services is using high-tech
equipment to sweep the Tamai (TAH-MY) home in Emeryville. Ralph believes ”

Sommy” planted devices inside the house while it was under construction.

In a written report to the O-P-P, Ralph has offered one solution which would
prevent “Sommy” from controlling the hydro in the house. Ralph says if
investigators can’t find the source of the surveillance then they should
consider having Hydro build-up a filter on the power lines.

This would electronically filter the signal to the ground so that control
would be ended. Ralph says “Sommy” might be using the family to try to
discredit the phone company, police and other authorities.

Electronic stalker returns to haunt family – April 9, 1997

EMERYVILLE, Ont. (CP) _ After a week’s reprieve, a Windsor-area family again
finds itself at the mercy of a cyberspace stalker. Sommy, as the high-tech
bogeyman calls himself, interrupted a phone conversation Tuesday to let the
Tamai family know he had returned from a Florida vacation.

“We’re living a nightmare,” said Debbie Tamai-Smith, 36, of Emeryville, about
20 kilometres east of Windsor. “It’s been a living hell.” Sommy has terrorized
the family since they moved into their home in November, turning lights on and
off, interrupting telephone conversations, changing channels on their TV and
listening in on family conversations. He distorts his voice and has confounded
the experts by avoiding detection.

Bell Canada has changed the family’s number, changed the phone lines in their
home and changed the telephone cable in the family’s subdivision. They even
tried to fry Sommy’s equipment with a 600-volt blast down the phone lines.
Sommy just laughed. “We don’t know who he is or how he’s doing it,” said
Const. Rick Harold of the provincial police.

“If I could I’d move out tomorrow,” said Dwayne, 34, Debbie’s husband.

Family hopes to catch cyber stalker

EMERYVILLE, Ont. (CP) _ A family haunted by a cyber-stalker is hoping the
glare of the media spotlight will force the spook out of hiding. Since
December, the Tamai family’s phone has been tapped, calls have been
interrupted by strange voices and power to the home has been cut off.

The electronic intruder, who alters his voice with the help of a computer,
calls himself Sommy. And he’s left police and the phone company stumped.
Debbie and Dwayne Tamai and their 15-year-old son Billy hope going public will
put pressure on investigators and produce new leads.

“It’s probably falling in to what Sommy wants, but the only way to get
the investigation going is to bring as much attention to it as
possible,” said lawyer Don Tait. Debbie Tamai received 32 calls from the media
Tuesday, including one from the TV tabloid show Inside Edition. “We wanted to
go public so we could get some help for our problem, but we never expected
this,” she said Wednesday.

The investigation has included extensive interviews with neighbors, friends
and close scrutiny of the Tamai family. They’ve been cleared as suspects and
the house has been rewired three times.

Sommy’s identity and method of infiltration has frustrated provincial police
specialists, Bell Canada, Ontario Hydro, Industry Canada and a series of
private security experts involved in the investigation. The Essex detachment
of provincial police says “none of these investigative tools have been able to
identify the source of these harassing phone calls.”

Police believe there is more than one Sommy and Debbie Tamai agrees. “There’s
a Sommy 1, a Sommy 2 and maybe a Sommy 3,” she said. “He told me one is the
(phone line) cutter, one is the hacker and the other is the lookout. I’ve
noticed differences in their voices, too. One is a little meaner than the
others.”

She said the phone Sommy often cuts in on private conversations with burps and
silly chatter. Ontario Solicitor General Bob Runciman said he has been assured
that police and Bell Canada are doing everything possible to catch Sommy.

BIG GUNS HUNT CYBER-STALKER – TV NETWORKS PAY TO SWEEP HOUSE – April 18, 1997

EMERYVILLE, Ont. — A special team has been called in to root out a high-tech
stalker who has electronically invaded a Windsor-area home. A seven-member
crew hired by two television networks is doing an intensive sweep of the home
of Dwayne and Debbie Tamai, which they say has been invaded by a stalker
calling himself Sommy.

Since December, the electronic intruder has tapped the Tamais’ phone lines at
will, interrupting conversations with burps and babble while disguising his
voice. He has overheard conversations in the house and seems to control the
home’s power, turning the entire system or individual appliances on or off at
will.

The sweep is being paid for by Canada’s Discovery Channel and Dateline NBC, a
television newsmagazine based in New York. The team of electronic sweeping
specialists is from Nepean Systems Inc., one of Canada’s top private
industrial security firms. Team co-ordinator Trevor Stewart, 41, is a former
RCMP officer and Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent. He said the
team is composed of intelligence and security experts from “a wide variety of
backgrounds.”

The house will be sealed for the duration of the sweep, which could take more
than 16 hours. The investigation will be spread over two days, with results to
be analysed on the spot.

Sommy victims’ home for sale – April 17, 1997 – The Windsor Star

“There’s a buyer for everything,” says an agent — even a house that’s
been electronically invaded

For sale: three-bedroom brick ranch home in Emeryville, with 1.5 baths,
finished family room and a two-car attached garage. Comes complete with
unwelcome cyber-stalker.

Debbie and Dwayne Tamai, the Emeryville couple who say their house has been
invaded by the bizarre electronic entity known as Sommy, have put their home
on the market. Asking price: $184,900.

“We’re listing the house now because we don’t know how long it will take to
sell it,” Debbie said. “We just want to get out of here and start over
somewhere else.”

Jim Gammon, the Deerbrook Realty sales agent who sold the Tamais’ the house
for $160,000 last fall, said the family’s dream home had turned into a
nightmare. But the presence of Sommy may not necessarily deter potential
buyers, he said.

“There’s a buyer for everything,” Gammon said. “Who knows, maybe some group
will buy the home to see if they can find Sommy for themselves.” Gammon said
the timing is right to list the house while the family’s peculiar problem
continues to attract widespread attention.

Tamai said there has already been an inquiry about the home from a potential
customer. While she is accepting all legitimate inquiries, Tamai said she has
no intention of turning her home into a museum for curiosity seekers. “I am
screening all inquires very carefully,” she said. “I don’t want people
wandering through here because they saw the house on TV. One of those people
might even turn out to be Sommy.”

Tamai said that once the house is sold — regardless of how long it takes
— the family intends to move out of Emeryville, but remain in the area. The
family said they want to go back to living anonymously.

“We won’t tell anyone where we’re going,” Debbie said. “And we’re never
moving into a custom-built home again. I want to find a house that a nice
older couple have been living in for the past 50 years without any problems.
That would be our dream house. But as it stands rights now, I’d live in a
shack to get away from here.”

Gammon said he has received about 50 phone calls from Sommy at his home since
the house was sold last Fall. “He just jibber-jabbers, mostly.” Gammon is
aware of four or five other friends of the Tamais who have received phone
calls from Sommy. “I’ve told him to get off the phone and get a life,” Gammon
said.

Hi-Tech Hunt Misses Cyberstalker – April 19, 1997 – Toronto Sun

EMERYVILLE, Ont. (CP) — An electronic stalker haunting a family home since
December eluded an espionage team hired by two television networks. The team
and its secretive, hi-tech gizmos couldn’t locate the stalker, who calls
himself Sommy, after a two-day sweep of the Windsor-area home of Dwayne and
Debbie Tamai.

“Our position on this matter is that no further action by (our team) is
warranted at this time,” Trevor Stewart, lead member of the Nepean Systems
Inc. crew, said yesterday. The company was brought in by the Discovery
Channel, which plans to air its show on Sommy on Monday, and Dateline NBC,
which aired its feature last night. “Nothing was found that would allow NSI to
take this case to the next level,” said Mike Cosentino, spokesman for the
Discovery Channel.

“It was worth it for us because we’re looking at the science behind electronic
sweeping. The show still stands, the result is different.” Cosentino said NSI
had hoped to be able to trace Sommy or at least provide police with clues as
to his whereabouts.

The electronic intruder — who police believe may be more than one perpetrator
— has tapped the family’s phone lines, interrupting conversations with burps
and babble. He has overheard conversations in the house and seems to control
the home’s electrical power, turning the entire system or individual
appliances on or off at will.

Stewart, 41, is a former RCMP officer and Canadian Security Intelligence
Service agent. He said the team was composed of intelligence and security
experts from “a wide variety of backgrounds,” but so secretive is their work
that further information about their experience is being kept under wraps.
Stewart would also not reveal what equipment was used for the sweep.

Security experts say the Tamais’ custom-built home probably included a few
features the family did not bargain for, including devices to listen in on
conversations and to control the electrical system. The family has put the
house up for sale.

Teenage son confesses to ‘hi-tech’ stalking of family – April 21, 1997
Sun News – TORONTO

Debbie and Dwayne Tamai were in tears last night after learning that “Sommy”,
the electronic intruder who harassed the Windsor-area couple for months, was
actually their son. Ontario Provincial Police say no charges will be laid
against 15-year-old Billy, who lives in the Emeryville home with his mother
and stepdad.

Charlene Tamai, Dwayne’s mother, said Debbie and Dwayne “were both in tears”
upon hearing the news. “I feel terrible for the two kids. They’ve just been
absolutely baffled by this whole mess,” Charlene said. She said Billy is “a
normal teenager.” Debbie Tamai issued a statement yesterday saying Billy made
a full confession after police asked him to come in for questioning on the
weekend. She also apologized for the actions of her son. “I don’t understand,”
she said. “For him to let it go on so long. I feel so stupid, so sorry.”

One family friend told the Sun the couple never suspected Billy as the
cyber-stalker and were completely surprised by the revelation. The stalker,
calling himself Sommy, attracted national attention after he began haunting
the Tamais’ home in December.

The intruder appeared to have tapped into the family’s phone lines,
interrupting conversations with burps and babble. He overheard conversations
in the house and appeared to control the home’s electrical power, turning
individual appliances on and off at will. The family was so shaken by Sommy
they put their house up for sale. Bell Canada has changed the family’s number,
changed the phone lines in their home and changed the cable in the family’s
new subdivision. They even tried to blow the bandit’s equipment with a
600-volt blast down the phone lines, to no avail.

He was able to elude investigators, Bell Canada, Ontario Hydro and even an
espionage team hired by two television networks. A two-day sweep by a team
of intelligence and security experts — brought in by Dateline NBC and the
Discovery Channel — failed to locate Sommy Friday. But it seems the hi-tech
harasser was actually low-tech — doing things like picking up extension
phones and flicking switches, a source said. OPP will release more information
on the case today.

Sgt. Doug Babbitt said a process of elimination led police to conclude no
devices were ever planted in the home. They also ruled out an intrusion into
the Bell Canada system. “We eliminated all external sources and interior
sources,” said Babbitt. “After going through the evidence gathered and the
interviews, we concluded that charges would revictimize the family,” said
Babbitt. “We felt it would be better for (the family) to settle this
themselves than to charge them.”

Last night, the answering machine at the Tamai house had a message saying
“That Sommy kid and his little minions, those stupid little kids with the
funny voices that are not really modulating their voices but in fact talking
in burp-speak … we are quite dismayed at the fact the media is portraying
them as phone freaks and hackers … it gives us a bad rep when retards like
this represent the scene. They don’t have the skill to make it, believe me.”

Experts say they knew family son was prankster – Monday, April 21, 1997
EMERYVILLE, Ont. (CP) – Some experts who tried to solve the mystery of an
elusive electronic nuisance named Sommy say they knew all along it was the
family’s 15-year-old son.

Electronics experts Donald and Ronald Dickson voluntarily went to the Tamai
house near Windsor last week to test it with an object-finding robot. Finding
nothing lurking in the walls, they listened to messages Sommy had left on the
answering machine and concluded the whole thing was a hoax. “When we heard the
tape, I said: ‘I know what this sounds like. It’s just a kid changing his
voice,”‘ said Donald Dickson, from Michigan. “Then the story got so elaborate.
The mother and father saw lights going on and off. I couldn’t understand why
they wouldn’t ask: ‘Hey Billy, where are you, are you OK?”‘

It turns out Billy, 15, didn’t use the fancy equipment the two security
experts were seeking. And rewiring the house’s phone and hydro system was a
waste of time. Since December, he’s simply been using a phone extension and
altering his voice to break into conversations and babble. And when the lights
went on and off, he was in the basement flipping the switch.

“I just want to say I’m sorry,” he said Monday. “It wasn’t supposed to go so
far, but I was too afraid to tell anybody.” Billy’s mother Debbie Tamai said
she took her son to a police station for a polygraph test Saturday to clear
his name. “Instead I got a full confession. I don’t know how I was so blind.
When your son looks you in the eyes and says it’s not him, you believe him.”

Dickson said he and his twin brother just couldn’t come out and tell Billy
or police officers what they knew because they didn’t have hard evidence.
“We took Billy aside and said: ‘Sommy’s a very intelligent kid’ and Billy
said, ‘I think you guys are smarter.’ “We couldn’t come right out and say,
‘Billy you did it.'” Billy often denied he was the culprit and he’d even
been in the room during a couple calls from Sommy, named after a dog on the
TV show Home Improvements.

The Discovery Channel and Dateline NBC sent investigative teams from Ottawa’s
Nepean Systems Inc. to check the home for a technological genius that was
plugging Sommy in. “Our first suspect was Billy,” team leader Trevor Stewart
said in a statement. Const. Debra Minot of provincial police, said the youth
was never ruled out as a suspect, but authorities had to ensure there was
nothing in the house before he took a lie detector test. Debbie apologized for
her son’s actions and said she’ll get him professional help.

Family lawyer Don Tait said the Tamais are trying to put their lives back
together. “There’s a lot of confusion as far as emotions are concerned.
They’re angry one minute, the next they’re more concerned about his welfare.
It’s just been a real rift in the family.” Tait suspects Billy is covering up
for a friend who helped him pull off telephone episodes, although he’s told
police he is solely responsible.

One doctor said Billy’s actions could be a sign he’s looking for attention.
“He is probably competing for affection and it seems to me he is trying to
be acknowledged by the family,” said Dr. Anthony Lucifero of Family
Counselling Centre in Toronto. Marshall Korenblum, a Toronto psychiatrist
specializing in adolescent behavior, said Billy may be seeking attention
but his actions are very extreme. ” It’s outside the realm of normal. There
is probably some pre-existing communication problem with his parents. You
often see this in bright kids.”

Sommy: An Inside Job – April 21, 1997 – THE WINDSOR STAR

15-year old Billy Tamai has confessed to being the hi-tech intruder who has
harassed his family for months. In the end, it was the answer many had
suspected and the Tamai family had dreaded: Sommy, the elusive hi-tech invader
who grabbed international headlines, is one of them.

Debbie and Dwayne Tamai were expected to face the media outside their
Emeryville home this morning to discuss what’s being called a practical joke
gone terribly wrong.

Fifteen-year-old Billy Tamai, Debbie’s son from a previous marriage, confessed
Saturday that he harassed his own family for months.

In a letter released Sunday the distraught mother wrote: ”You all are
probably thinking, ‘how did we not know?’ When I asked my son numerous times
if he knew anything about what’s been happening around here and he replies:
‘No, mom. I would never hurt you like this,’ a mother’s first instinct is to
believe him. All the crying I heard from him at night I thought was caused by
Sommy. We now realize it was him crying out for help because he wanted to end
all this, but was afraid because of how many people were now involved.

“I don’t consider my son a bad person for all of this, I just consider him
a boy who needs professional help to deal with his emotions.”

The letter concludes with a plea for forgiveness. “We would like to apologize
to the world for any pain or harm that was caused by this whole situation.”
Tamai, a casino worker who took a leave of absence because of the ordeal, also
thanked Bell Canada and the OPP for their efforts to help.

Her brother, Gary Smith of Windsor, emerged from the Emeryville house Sunday
after a long chat with his nephew whom he described as “a good kid.” The teen
was “very remorseful” and insists he acted alone, he said. But Smith believes
he is covering for friends who were also involved.

There was at least one time when the Tamais received a call from someone
calling himself Sommy while Billy was in the room. “If you look at all the
evidence, it’s impossible for him to have worked by himself.”

It’s believed Billy simply cut in on the phone conversations using an
extension in his bedroom, Smith explained, but could not say how the teen
disguised his voice. There are four phones and two phone lines in the
house, he said.

Billy is an average high school student and has never been in serious trouble
before, Smith added. “It’s a shock. It’s a shock to everybody and they’re
taking it pretty rough in there.”

Other bizarre and disturbing happenings in the house — lights and appliances
would randomly turn off and on — were also manipulated from inside, said OPP
Sgt. Doug Babbitt.

Sommy often reminded the family he could hear every noise they made, and he
openly scoffed at investigators trying to find him. No charges will be laid
against Billy Tamai to prevent “further victimization of the family,” Babbitt
said. “When the investigators sat down and looked at all the evidence….they
felt charges were not warranted.”

At no time were any family members cleared as suspects, he said. The
investigation was complex but specialized and kept two officers busy since
police were first called Jan. 20. Resources from various other agencies were
also used as the costly probe wore on.

“It was important for us to systematically eliminate all the potential
sources that could have been doing it and that takes time,” Babbitt said.
“As well, it seemed every time we set up a piece of equipment to eliminate
how something could be done, suddenly Sommy never called for eight or 10
days.” Babbitt said the family’s calls were interrupted using simple, widely
available technology.

He would not elaborate except to say there was never an intrusion into the
Bell Canada system. No hidden devices were ever planted in the residence nor
were any external devices used, he added.

It was unknown Sunday wether the Tamai family will be charged for any of the
wiring or investigative work done by Bell, Ontario Hydro and others.
Techno-wizards armed with all manner of scanning gizmos had scoured the
home with no luck.

After weeks of interrupting phone conversations with belches and babble,
Sommy announced in early April he was vacationing in Florida and hadn’t
been heard from since. That’s when this paranoia-inciting story of
It-Could-Happen-to-You proportions really caught the public’s fancy. Media
crews from across North America converged on the modest house in recent
weeks.

Special segments on the case were filmed for Unsolved Mysteries, Dateline
NBC, and the Discovery Channel. Producer for the Montel Williams talk show
even faxed the Tamai family a contract.

Amid all the speculation surrounding the 100-week police investigation and
media blitz, fingers were pointed at Billy Tamai, but his mother steadfastly
defended him. She accompanied him to the Belle River OPP station on Saturday
for a lie-detector test that was to clear his name for good. Instead, her son
tearfully confessed to everything.

Public reaction to the news ranged from sympathy to anger. Emeryville resident
Bernadette Renaud, 43, said the small town’s image has been tarnished and
those responsible should be punished. “I’m disgusted,” she said Sunday at the
news charges won’t be laid.

Dennis Dumont, 26, moved in beside the Tamai family four weeks ago — before
he’d heard about the Sommy mystery. He’s relieved the case has been cracked,
and figures the whole thing will soon blow over. “I feel kind of sorry for the
family, what they’re going through.”

The Tamais recently put their house up for sale in an effort to escape Sommy.
Now they plan to move where they can leave this mess behind and start anew,
Smith said.

Troubled teen says ‘sorry’ April 22, 1997 – THE WINSOR STAR

Billy Tamai doesn’t know — or won’t say — why he terrorized his own
family. But, the 15-year-old did offer an apology to the public on Monday.
Some teens steal cars. Some abuse drugs. Some develop eating disorders.

Sommy the cyberstalker may just be a most unorthodox case of a troubled
adolescent calling for help, says a Windsor psychologist with experience
dealing with teens.

“We live in a cyber world. It’s not surprising that a teenager would decide
to convey his pain through this medium,” said Dr. Antoon Leenaars.

“Adolescence is a time of trouble. I think adults tend to forget how
difficult a time it can be,” he said.

Fifteen-year-old Billy Tamai, who confessed on the weekend to being Sommy,
is smack in the middle of the 14-to-16 age group that’s most at risk to
adolescent pressures, Leenaars said.

“It’s like an iceberg. Sometimes all the adolescent, let alone the parents,
is aware of is the very tip. Most of the trouble is submerged.”

Unfortunately for the Tamais — Billy, and parents Debbie and Dwayne — a
painful and tragic family problem unfolded under the unwavering eye of the
media. Sommy never existed, but ironically it was his very non-existence
that scraped away the Tamais’ last vestige of privacy.

At a crowded news conference Monday morning Debbie Tamai explained how
she’d taken Billy to the Belle River OPP detachment on Saturday to clear
him from suspicion, once and for all.

“I took him there to clear his name through a lie detector test,” she said,
holding back tears as she read from a prepared statement. “Instead we got a
full confession from my son.”

Debbie said her son went to the police station knowing he would fail the
polygraph. Too afraid to tell his parents himself, Billy wanted to be
exposed by the police. “I looked at him and said, ‘Are you doing this?’ He
said no. I looked at him again and he started crying. “I said, ‘It’s over.
Tell me,’ and he did.”

Billy sat beside her as she spoke, his eyes lowered in contrition. It
hadn’t taken a technical whiz to perpetrate the hoax — Billy had invaded
phone calls from a downstairs extension and interrupted electrical power by
throwing the circuit breaker.

He disguised his voice by holding his breath. The enigmatic name, Sommy,
had been that of a dog on an episode of the sitcom Home Improvement.

Lawyer Don Tait, who suggested the family go public with the story when the
police and Bell Canada seemed unable to solve the mystery, said at least
one other person must have been involved in the hoax.

Several witnesses spoke to Sommy on the telephone in the presence of Billy.
“Clearly there was another young person. I’m not interested in knowing his
name and if (Billy) wants to protect him that’s his business,” Tait said.

Billy denied that the hoax involved anyone else. But while the “how” was
easily answered, even Billy couldn’t explain the “why.” Why had he terrorized
his own family? What did he hope to accomplish? Billy paused a long time
before answering simply: “I don’t know.”

It’s a question Debbie Tamai has also asked.

She acknowledged that Billy has had to deal with some tough problems,
including the break-up of Debbie’s first marriage, and his being afflicted
with attention deficit disorder.

“He’s had a lot of problems in the past,” she said.

By confronting the hoax openly and honestly, the family hopes to begin to
put life back in order. Billy will be referred for psychiatric care and the
whole family will take part in the counselling.

Leenaars said that honesty is the best way to begin healing for anyone
grappling with a harmful family problem. Unfortunately for the Tamais, the
intense public interest in Sommy being honest and open means including the
media in the process, at least initially.

“How could it not be public?” he said.

“But the worst thing to do is for a family to keep quiet about something
like this. Sticking your head in the sand like an ostrich is not a solution.”

Meeting reporters was also a way for the family to apologize for the trouble
caused by the Sommy hoax. “I just want to say I’m sorry for everybody I hurt,”
Billy said. “It wasn’t supposed to go this far. I was just too afraid to tell
anybody.”

Debbie Tamai accepts some of the responsibility for failing to see through
her son’s charade and realizing his underlying suffering. “I don’t know how I
was blind. When your son looks you in the eyes and says he’s not doing it, you
oversee everything else.”

And though she’s shaken by his deceit, she has already begun to forgive.
“Of course (I’ll forgive him,)” she said. “He’s my son. We all make mistakes.”

Mystery may be over, but media blitz is not – April 22, 1997 -THE WINDSOR STAR

The mystery of Sommy’s identity may be solved, but it’s not the end of the
story as far as the media are concerned. Already, there’s talk of a movie-of-
the-week.

The media hype of the last few weeks continued unabated Monday as news
organizations pressed for more answers from the family of Billy Tamai. The
15-year-old admitted Sommy was an alter-ego he assumed as a practical joke.

Even as early as Monday morning, a lawyer representing the family said
several organizations had asked him about rights for a TV movie. Requests
to interview Billy were pouring in from the international news media.

“This has taken the family completely by surprise,” said Dan Dietz, a
Bloomfield Hills, Mich., lawyer who has co-ordinated media coverage.
Some groups, such as talk shows, offered to pay the Tamais’ expenses to go
to New York. But none had actually paid the family, he said.

“I don’t think they ever expected this much attention,” said Dietz.

But Windsor lawyer Don Tait’s office was packed with media from as far away
as Toronto Monday and the focus now is on Billy and his relationship with
his family.

Debbie Tamai pleaded with media to leave the family alone: “Do you think
now we could have our house back, please?”

That seems unlikely, however, given that Billy took the name Sommy from an
episode of Home Improvement. There were also revelations he suffers from
attention deficit disorder and he has had trouble dealing with his parents’
divorce. All of this is grist for the media.

“It’s a much more involved story now,” admitted Dietz. Print and electronic
media from around the globe continue to call asking for interviews with
Billy. “I think the family needs more than a day or two to get over this.”

Among the organizations that have sought information about the family or
made requests for exclusive rights to the story are 48 Hours, talk shows
Montel Williams and Maury Povich, CBC News, the National Enquirer, Good
Morning America, and Unsolved Mysteries.

Only Dateline NBC and Inside Edition actually got stories on the air. It’s
unclear what Billy’s confession will mean about future stories or interest.

Monday night, Discovery Channel’s @discovery.ca, a weeknight science
program, aired a report on the findings of an Ottawa-based team of
electronics surveillance experts, who were at the Tamais’ Emeryville home
last Friday.

Paul Lewis, Discovery Channel Canada’s producer of in-house productions,
said the confession didn’t affect his decision to go with the story. “We knew
going into it the potential risk,” said Lewis. Discovery Channel and Dateline
NBC paid Nepean Systems Inc. (NSI) $5,000. “But we feel we got the story we
were after, which was a look at the leading-edge technology.”

In a news release issued late Monday, NSI spokesman Trevor Stewart said his
firm had concluded Sommy was a hoax. “Our team had formed the opinion that
this was not a hi-tech assault, but rather a low-tech lie,” said Stewart.
“Our first suspect was Billy.”

Reporters at Tait’s office Monday peppered Billy with questions about his
motives and the name of his accomplice. He steadfastly refused to reveal
who helped him pull off the hoax.

Michael Bernacchi, a media analyst at University of Detroit Mercy, said the
media’s interest in the story arose from “the scent of a suggestion of the
outrageousness” of Sommy.

“The media continues to play an activist’s role in seeking, searching and
solving,” said Bernacchi. “Whatever happened to the old gatekeeper concept?
I guess gatekeeping is a media function of the past.”

He said the media seldom exercise balance in covering stories like this.
“Just look at how they destroyed that poor guy’s life in Atlanta,” he said,
referring to Richard Jewell, who was widely accused in the media of having
planted a bomb during last July’s Olympic Games in Atlanta.

“Everything I’ve seen in the way the story has been covered suggests
there’s a Son of Sommy on the way. Where have we heard that before?”

Tim Kiska, TV critic for The Detroit News, said Sommy has all the elements
that appeal to the mass media.

“You’ve got a family’s grief that can be trotted out for all to see.
There’s a certain X-Files spin to the story. And the best part is it’s all
there. Nobody has to dig for this story.”

University of Windsor communications professor Stan Cunningham said it
isn’t surprising to see the media scrambling for answers from the Tamai
family. “Journalists have been hoisted with their own petard on this and
are looking for somebody to blame.”

But the media only give the audience what it wants, he said.

“We deserve what we get. It’s like a traffic accident, we’re all gawkers.
The media know that, they’re part of us. So they give us these stories, the
weird and the unusual, stories from the Twilight Zone.”

In the Hunt

TV shows and media interested in the story: 48 Hours, The Montel Williams
Show, The Maury Povich Show, Associated Press, Unsolved Mysteries, Range
Universe (a U.S. cable show), Inside Edition, Extra!, Good Morning America,
a San Francisco radio show, CBC News, The Globe and Mail, The National
Enquirer.

Photographs requested by: The Sunday Mail in England, Time Magazine, The
National Enquirer

Media at Monday’s news conference were: CBET-Channel 9, CBEFT-Channel 54
(French), CHWI-Channel 16/60, CBC-Windsor (radio), CKLW-AM, The Windsor
Star, CITY-TV (Toronto), WKBD-Channel 50, WJBK-Channel 2, WDIV-Channel 4,
WXYZ-Channel 7, WJR-AM, WWJ-AM (News Radio)

If you’ve ever been on #rock or chatted with any of us anywhere else for any
length of time, you’ve probably seen us going ibaibaibiabiabiabiaba and
wondered what the hell it means. I asked RBCP about the origin of iba, and
he e-mailed me back with the following response:

“I have a toy called a Yak Bak which makes a noise that sounds like
ibaibaiba. Me and Zak used to always play it at OCI operators and somehow
everyone in #rock started saying it. I guess it’s gotten a little out of hand
like everything we do.”

After he told me this, I was curious to hear what it sounded like, so I went
down to Toys-R-Us to find a Yak Bak and hear it say ibaibaiba. For those of
you who don’t know, a Yak Bak is a toy with a bunch of buttons that cause it
to make stupid noises when you push them. You can also record a short message
or sound on it, and then have the Yak Bak play it back to you (cheap red box?

I wrote this article for those of you who are planning to attend
DefCon this year. This is a true story about part of my trip to DefCon
last year. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll CRINGE in disgust! But there
are very important lessons to be learned here. Those of you that were
there should not read this story as it will bring tears to your eyes
again. Some peoples names have been removed not because I forgot them,
but because I don’t think they would want to be associated with something
like this.

Last year I decided to go to DefCon in Las Vegas at the last minute.
I had to drive from my hometown to San Antonio to catch a flight due to
leave in 3 1/2 hours and I was 3 hours away! “OH SHIT!”, thought I. So I
quickly threw some various articles of clothing into a duffle bag and
jumped in the car. Three hours fifteen minutes later I was at the terminal
and boarded my plane just in time. “DAMN I’M SMOOTH!”, I thought to myself
as I dozed off on the plane. (Because of my tardiness I had to sit by a

rather unattractive person on the plane so I didn’t want to talk to them.)
When I awoke we were on the ground. I got my bag and left the plane.

LAS VEGAS! YES! I love this place it’s almost my most favorite
place in the world! (Too bad it isn’t in TEXAS.) I went to the FABULOUS
Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino to meet the people I was to room with. Then
it hit me… I HAVE NEVER MET OR SEEN THE PEOPLE I WAS ROOMING WITH!!! I
knew the PLA types that I was staying with (El_Jefe and Apok)but I had NO
IDEA who the guy that had the room was or which room he was in. I tried
to get hold of El Jefe, but he had not heard from the guy with the room.
Being the kinda guy I am I decided to walk around the wonderful city of
Las Vegas and spend money.

It must have been at least 97 in the shade that day and I sweated
quite a bit. After about 4 hours of walking and riding around I went back
to the hotel and called El back. He gave me the room number and I went to
meet my roommates. It was late and everyone wanted to go to a strip bar.
I wasn’t of age so I stayed behind to shower. After my shower to remove
the heavy funk of my walk I got out and put on some new clothes only to
find…. I HAD NO CLEAN SOCKS!!!!!!! (For those of you that think like
me: Yes, I had clean underwear.) (Again for those of you that think like
me: boxers and briefs)

Now normally this wouldn’t be too bad for only 3 days, but I am
special. I have an ability to sweat alot out of my feet. Where the
average human sweats about a pint a day out of their feet I have the
magical ability to end drought in the SAHARA! On top of that I like to
wear zippered jack boots past my ankles. Needless to say the next day was
coming soon we were not yet ready for the Evil’s of Cal’s socks!

Day 2 rolled around and I met numberous wonderful people. Lots of
wonderful people and one fuckin asshole. This guy saw me talking to a
girl he came with and threaten to “KICK (my) ASS!” and threw around a few
unoriginal insults. She told me to ignore him because he wasn’t even her
boyfriend. But I couldn’t do that! OH NO! He insulted me..
I looked at his name tag. BINGO! His room number on his badge. I
memorized it and stored it for later use.

After the end of day two I snuck off to the room to air out my feet
away from all the others. I let my socks air out for about 5 minutes.

After awhile I got involved in a movie. Just then EVERYONE I knew at
DEFCON cam to the room. One of them described it as like walking into an
invisible wall of FUNK! EYES WATERED. FACES WINCED. I mean people fucking
nearly puked… The rancid stench of my feet were just TOO MUCH! Every
one in the room opened doors, broke windows whatever we could do to rid
the incredible stench of my socks! I mean 30 FRIGGIN MINIUTES went by and
when people walked NEAR the hallway they still smelled it. Pretty damn
bad.

After shoving them in them in a Ziploc(tm) bag a realized I didn’t
want to take these damn things home. I quickly realized that the socks
were not a damnation but a blessing in disguise. I took the bag with the
funky socks and put them on so I could wear them for about 2 hours more
running round town… AWWWWW YEAH! STINK!

Anyway, I threw them in a bag and took them to Floor 23. Remember
the asshole from Day 2? I took a DEEP DEEP ( I MEAN FUCKING DEEP) breath
and opened up the air conditioner vent on the hallway of my mark and put
my socks in there. I ran back to the elevators and exhaled.. WHOA! As I
inhaled again I caught a sniff that threw me back and the vent was more
than 40 foot away!!! They stunk WHOLE FUCKING FLOOR UP! I stood around
for awhile toughing it out too see peoples reactions. I mean EYES FUCKING
WATERED! IT WAS GREAT! People got out of the elevators and nearly passed
out! I LOVED IT! And that fucker had to sleep on that floor! It still
stank 2 hours later when I checked it on my way out!!!

     The lessons to be learned:

    1. If you are going to take a trip plan it out.  Give
       yourself enough time to get organized so you don't
       forget shit.
    2. Although Zippered Boots are cool looking, they may
       not be the best item for walking in the desert!
    3. Deodorant is not a substitue for dirty socks.  Niether
       is cologne, Lysol, dangly car air freshners, Renuzit,
       hotel soaps, shaving cream, or Monte Carlo Red Lager
       (don't ask).
    4. Ziploc(tm) bags are DAMN handy items.
    5. Always pay attention to people that are pissing you off.
       If you watch them closely you'll pick up valuable info.
    6. Don't piss off Cal!  He will get you back in the MOST
        disgusting way possible.
        

I hope you can use this information to help you enjoy your trip to
DefCon or anywhere for that matter. Oh yeah, by the way check out the new
PLA bbs at http://cal.dbstech.com or telnet to cal.dbstech.com. Remember
properly cared for socks can be your friend, but if you cross the socks
they will come for you! So long PLA magazine!

Phreaking in some cases, has almost become a war. Old School Vs. New School,
and New School Vs. Newbies. There are more new school’s out there lately than
anything else, and alot of you may not believe anything i write, because this
zine is read by a “better” class of phreaks, and probaly dont deal with these
new school fucks.

However, I’ve Seen it, most of my friends have seen it, and you have probally
seen it once or twice. What the problem is, is that the new school phreaks
(most anyway) are all worthless pieces of shit, and dont think of anyone but
them selves. I know alot of old school phreaks and i’ve seen alot of newbies,
and you will notice on irc, via email and things such as that, if a newbie
asks for help and has even the smallest question, most OSP’s will give them
an answer, or atleast refer them to a faq file or something.

You ask these NSP’s a question, and depending on where you are, if its IRC,
you are kickbanned for asking a question, for wanting to gain knowledge. If
via email, the NSP’s will retaliate with a god damned email flood (whoopie!).
If in person, the NSP’s will make up lies about a person, to make them hated
by the whole phreaking community.

If anyone has read the mentors last words, you will notice him mentioning
something about gaining knowledge, and how things should be free, and things
such as that. The OSP’s will give you the answers for nothing, the NSP’s
require you to sit around for a couple months, possibly pay them, or suck
there dicks, which makes this knowledge NON-FREE. My message here is, is that
ALL knowledge should be free, and distributed.

The New School fuckers will eventually become Old School Bastards, giving us,
the already Old School phreaks, a bad name, or maybe we will be called
Grandparent phreaks, but I doubt it. And as for the newbies, try not to ask
stupid questions, but if it is really something you dont know, and cant find
on the web, ask away. Phreaking isn’t getting any easier, the Telco comes up
with newer and newer shit everyday. Such as 5ess-2000, we are going to have to
find new ways of doing shit once this is setup all over, and with the new
school phreaks not teaching anyone the newbies will never learn, and there
arent enough OSP’s to teach all the newbies.

Here is a couple words you should all get carved into your forheads “Learn,
Teach”. If everyone does that, the scene will only get better. Those are my
thoughts on this subject, any hate mail regarding this subject can be sent to
me directly at devnull@dimensional.com

OK, you’ve probably been here. You know this kid who, day after day
after day, keeps acting like a fucking asshole towards you. You are
sick of all the crap he is pulling you and you have done all the revenge
tactics outlined in PLA003. You know that he has a job, and they no
longer accept collect calls from anyone with that person’s name (From
now on I will use the name Brian Ebersole) to their workplace. I
suggest quitting that no good, minimum wage job for him.

OK, first you need to know a little bit of info on Brian. Find out his
name, address, phone number, Social Security number, etc. Also, it is
important that you have the info of the person the phone line of Brian
so that you can disconnect it (outlined later on).

Call up the place of work of this asshole and say that you are Brian
Ebersole, and I am giving you notice that I am quitting this job. Tell
them that they can take this job and shove it, because you’re moving out
of town and never will live there again. Here is a sample conversation
between you and their place of employment:

 You: Hello, this is Brian Ebersole.
Them: Yeah, how may I help you Brian?
 You: Hi,  I am moving out of town next week and I am going to
      have to help pack, so I am quitting from your restaurant.
Them: OK, Brian, I hope you have had a good time working here,
      Where whould we send the final check?
 You: Send the final check to 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York,
      New York,  10019.
Them: OK Brian, hope you have enjoyed your experience working with
      us.
 You: Yeah Whatever.

OK, once you have done this, you need to disconnect his phone service. It
really does not matter in what order that you do these two things. OK onto
disconnecting his phone service, You need to call the Ameritech, US West,
Pacific Bell, or whatever residental offices and request that you disconnect
his service. Do this from a payphone, just to be safe. They will (at least
Ameritech) ask for who the phone service is registered to, so have that info
handy. You also need to know their Social Security number. Once you start
talking, and have all the info, the rest should be easy.

The reason that you need to disconnect his phone service, is that it does
not give the place of work to call back and verify that he wants to quit.
They simply think that he is moving, and never think about it again.

He will eventually get his job back, most likely, but the reaction of them
when someone that said that they were quitting and have them come in is
priceless. If for some reason, this does not work, make sure that you have
FULL info, because you need it to disconnect the line. Oh yeah, if he asks
questions about who called there and quit his job for him and who disconnected
his phone line, just say that Heaven’s Gate made you do it. I have personally
done this, but without the phone line cancellation. It worked, except that
they called him back the next day to ask to verify it, that is why I included
the part of disconnecting his phone service.

Also, a friend of mine did this to one of his friends when the friend said
that his job sucked, so he called and quit his job for him. The kid really
didn’t like that job anyway, so it didn’t really have any effect on him.

Oh yeah, any questions related to this insanity can be relayed to me. Just
go onto #rock (on dalnet) and look for the nick Spanish_Prince or S_P.

Ok, let’s get a few things straight. Back in issue #45, kcochran wrote an
article saying there is no group called PLA, and that it’s only a magazine.
Well, hate to break it to you, but there is. I’ll tell you all that tale now.

RBCP has always taken the stance that PLA is just his ‘zine and that’s fine.
However, over the years, PLA *has* grown into much more. Now granted, we
didn’t always keep people in the group updated as to who was in it, and that
was a problem that finally reared it’s ugly head the day of the release of
PLA 045. The organization is loosely put together at best. So here’s how I
see it:

Phone Losers of America, the ‘zine: This zine was the idea of RBCP. Many
people have written things for it, but the bulk of the work is done by him.
Just because you wrote/write for the ‘zine does NOT make you a member!

PLA, the group: This kind of evolved over the past 3 or 4 years. el_jefe just
kind of decided that there could be a group. Well, not really. It was just
born one day. While he takes quite the active role as far as who is in and
not, the things we do, the calls we make, the people we bother, etc, we have
always recognized RBCP *and* Colleen Card as the heads of the group. When
people ask me who is in PLA, they are always at the top of the list! RBCP and
Colleen expressed a concern to me that they didn’t always feel like they were
part of the group, and that’s is our fault. We’re lazy and don’t call them
alot. As of late we try to keep in touch with all the PLA members frequently.

The PLA website (www.bright.net/~bac/pla/): This is *not* the group’s site!
It is for the ‘zine, as kcochran stated in his article. RBCP and Colleen
maintain the site and quite well I might add. They do a bangup job, and with
the addition of netmask doing loads of cool stuff it just gets better and
better. It’s also the place to order the cool t-shirt, prank call tapes and
other stuff (like hats!) Go check it out.

#rock: It *is* the home of the PLA on EFNet. Case closed. The real story is
long ago and far away, [z3ns] (now called dazen) used to hang out in there.
One fine day, el_jefe came in and [z3ns] opped him. Someone said something
fruity to el, and he took over. We all started going in there and the rest is
history. Not just PLA members hang out there, and I will admit that over the
past year or so, politics have taken over. It used to be fun to sit on there
and give idiots who wanted to talk about rock music a load of shit then boot
them off. Now it seems people just get booted before they can say anything.
Perhaps it will go back to the way it was.

PLA state sites: Look, RBCP thought it was gonna be a good idea, and it could
still be. All you kids with the state sites, here’s some free advice. Don’t
just rip the main site. That’s lame as hell. Create an original site. Don’t
write your own PLA issues and think it’s legit. Don’t call yourselves the
“Phone Losers of (insert state here)”, as that makes you look stupid. Last
but not least, if you have a state site, YOU ARE NOT AUTOMATICLY IN PLA!

The prank call tapes: No, everyone on the tapes making the calls are not all
PLA members. Most of them are friends of RBCP and Colleen. Keep your eye out
for the new tape, coming soon on Big Beef Bueno records. (plug)

Now for the beef! This is gonna make people mad, but here is the *REAL* and
*ONLY* PLA members list:

RedBoxChiliPeper
Colleen Card
el_jefe
dhate
Novastorm
Calimar Rasputin
Telecon
Acr0nym (he just don’t know it yet)
Apok0lyps

If you’re not on the list, your not in. Membership is by invite only. Don’t
email us or join #rock and ask. It just makes you look dumb. Who the hell
would want to be in PLA anyway? Nuff said! Greets to: all members, #rock
regulars, tacd, TNo, africa, r0y, girls with big thingies, girls with small
thingies, the bartender at 1082, all the 303 crowd, etc. If I missed you,
tough.

[You wouldn’t expect me to just let someone write an article without
me, RBCP, butting in and expressing MY views, would you? Goodness,
no. Just a few minor things I’d like to say. First, this is about
the most idiotic argument I’ve ever heard. Who cares if there’s a
PLA? Again, what’s the benefit of having a group? There is now a
PLA group so how’s this going to change anything? I personally am
not a member of the PLA group nor a member of any group. I can’t
remember a time in my life when I was ever a part of any kind of
group. Ever.

I don’t even know who the hell Telecon or Acr0nym are but I do
know that people who say they’re a part of PLA on IRC are usually
the ones who kickban the real PLA contributors from #rock because
they “didn’t know who they were.” People who’ve made graphics for
PLA, contributed articles, written letters, answered questions,
helped us with so many things over that past few years and made
PLA what it is (or was) are getting kicked from #rock everyday so
I really can’t see how this could be considered a home of PLA when
the people doing the kicking usually people we’ve never even heard
of.

Futhermore, the state PLA sites is a great idea and it’s really
turned out some positive results so far. The point of state sites
is not to worship the almighty PLA, but to document the underground
half of your city and show other H/Pers how’s it’s done where you
live. Not everyone is following these guidelines but it’s getting
better and state sites are welcome to call their pages whatever
the hell they want or to create their own group and call it Phone
Losers of xxx, then that’s totally fine with me. If a group of
people in 303 can do it then why can’t anyone else in the world?]

A couple weeks ago, my stupid-ass English teacher gave us a dumb assignment
to write a 150-word story about someone being rude to someone else. Since I
had nothing better to do at the time, I came up with this 400+ word rambling
story about RBCP’s adventures at a local 7-Eleven (it’s also pretty funny to
note that I got like a perfect score on this paper, my English teacher is a
weirdo). Enjoy!

RedBoxChiliPepper pulled into the gas station, a long line of cars behind
him desperate for gas. Thinking it would be pretty funny and annoy
everybody, he pulled up to one of the gas oumps, shut his engine off, and
went into the convenience store. He hung out n the store for awhile, and
managed to drive off most of the customers by begging them to buy some of
his cool PLA t-shirts.

After noticing that he had overly annoyed the clerk by driving most of his
business away, RBCP began picking random items from the store, including a
ton of pez, a jumbo Slurpee, and a large quantity of beer things. He paid
for these items one by one, taking one item up, paying for it, going back
and getting another item, paying for it, ad nauseum. This annoyed the clerk
even further, which RBCP thought was pretty funny.

Next, he deicded to play the generic kung-fu-type video game in the store.
He pushed all the stupid kids out of the way and started playing. After
playing the game for awhile, WHOOPS, he knocked his jumbo Slurpee into the
vent on the game and created a lovely show of sparks and short-circuitry.
Now bored, RBCP left the convenience store.

Suddenly remembering that his car was still parked at the gas pump (and a
few inches short of the pump’s reach), RBCP called one of the gas station
attendants over to fill up his car with gas. He had fun watching the
attendant struggle with the gas pump for awhile, then he suddenly decided to
call his girlfriend Colleen Card. He rushed over to the payphone outside the
convenience store. Deciding to be sneaky, RBCP tried to third-party bill the
call to a random person out of the phone book, then to the clerk inside.
These attempts failed, but his stolen calling card number went through just
fine and he talked to Colleen for awhile.

After making plans to go out and abuse illegal substances with her that
evening, RBCP happened upon a ladder that led to the convenience store’s
roof. He climbed up and walked around for awhile, and found the store’s air
conditioner. Deciding to be cool, RBCP turned off the air conditioner and
the hurried back down the ladder. A few minutes later, the convenience store
clerk came running out, jabbering in some foreign tongue and obviously very
angry for some reason. Thinking it would be a good time to loot the store
since the clerk wasn’t inside, RBCP ran inside, found the circuit breaker,
and shut off all the power, and the gas pumps as well. He began grabbing
random things, including all the bags of Cheetos, three more jumbo Slurpees
(he also wedged the handle on the Slurpee machine down so a lovely mess was
created), and all the prepaid calling cards he could find. After grabbing
all the stuff that he could hold, RBCP jumped in his car and left,
accidentally hitting the convenience store clerk on his way out. How rude!

–Logic Box [408]

OK you sick people, here’s some more stuff you might get a chuckle out of.
Make sure your mouth is empty so you don’t splatter all over the screen. I
went to do the “fake bake” tonight. I was lying there thinking about “Funny
Things to do at a Tanning Salon”. My mind was free to wander. I wish I had
had a pen to write them all down. Here are a few:

Get some really gross pictures of people with skin cancers. Plaster the wall
in the tanning room with them. Distribute brochures telling of the horrors of
ultraviolet radiation all over the waiting area.

Leave behind a medical bracelet that reads, “I AM HIV POSITIVE”.

Take an extra set of clothes (possibly a police uniform) and leave them on the
chair. They will be looking all over for a naked person.

Tanning is mostly a woman’s area. Women don’t like their turf invaded. I plan
to take advantage of this. I AM NOT SEXIST. I am an opportunist. If there is
humor in it, I work with what I have.

If a man is running the place, post large pictures of naked women lying in
tanning beds all over the room.

Also, if there is a TV and VCR in the waiting room, take a video camera, go to
your designated tanning room. Instead of tanning, put the camera in the corner
of the room and video the empty tanning bed the whole time. When you leave, if
the owner asks why you didn’t use your time, tell him that your claustrophobia
is acting up and you could not lay in the bed today. While his back is turned,
plug in your video tape and hit “play”. Everybody will think the pervert is
watching them while they are tanning!

Swipe some of those small security cameras. This may be tricky since they are
supposed to PREVENT theft. Start mounting them on the walls in different
rooms. This should cause an immediate uproar!

Get one of those full sized inflatable dolls. Take the doll and an extra set
of clothes to your room. Inflate the doll and leave it in the bed. Leave her
“clothes” on the chair to complete the picture. Time how long it takes them to
actually lift the top of the bed!

Get some of that iridescent paint that lights up when hit with UV light. Paint
the words, “DEATH RAY” just above the victim’s face. Make sure it can be read
with those stupid little tanning goggles. That should scare the hell out of
the next person who uses the bed.

Use a chocolate candy bar to make “skid marks” under your butt. This will
gross out the person who has to clean the bed. As an alternative, leave a pair
of underwear behind with chocolate all over the crotch.

Take a box of KFC. Eat it and leave crumbs and grease all over the bed.

Get an empty bottle of tanning oil. Fill it up with sun block. Victim will
think she has found a free bottle. The block will prevent any tanning at all,
wasting her tanning time.

Connect a timer to the fan so it stops after about a minute or so leaving the
tanner sweating.

Attach a fake urinal (Spencer’s Gifts has these) to the wall in the room and
put some orange juice in it.

Chew a whole box of gum and stick wads to the top of the bed.

Leave some of those huge plastic roaches around the room. They will never
find all of them when they clean the bed.

Crush up some fart rock (aromatic insulation stone) and fan the fumes into
the next room.

Go out at night and catch a whole bunch of moths. Release them in the salon.
When a tanning bed is lit up, they will be attracted to it and buzz the
occupant.

Find a couple of stray cats, take them to the room with you and drop one into
each of the rooms on either side of you. While you are tanning, listen for
the screams as the cats attempt to get into the bed with the naked tanners.

Alot of readers have already seen this history but since this is the last
issue I felt it was appropriate to print it. Thanks to Logic Box who converted
this from HTML to ASCII for me. This is just sort of a history of the PLA. You
know, where it’s been and where it’ll never go, that kind of thing.

Contrary to popular belief, I am not the great, almighty founder of the PLA.
Zak is. In September & October of 1994 I started getting really bored so I
would take my laptop computer to the Portland, Oregon airport every day and
do alot of bbsing all morning while Colleen Card was at school. Zak, posting
alot of nonsense everywhere, as usual, wrote somewhere, “Well, I’m going to
start a really cool hacker group and I’m going to call us the Phone Losers of
America.”

A few months later, around November 28th, I left Colleen and moved to Austin,
Texas to get an apartment and a job and go to HoHoCon. (I bet I was the only
one there that actually moved to Austin just to attend HoHoCon.) I had some
extra money and I was bored so I went to a printshop on Third Street and had
them print up 1000 business cards that said, “Phone Losers of America” on
them. When Zak arrived in Austin, we had a lot of fun handing these cards to
complete strangers, throwing them around restaurants, licking them and
slapping them on storefront windows in downtown and leaving them sitting
everywhere around the Ramada Inn during HoHoCon.

After HoHoCon, I didn’t have anything better to do so I decided that since I
hadn’t visited my parents in about two years, I’d book a flight to Illinois
and go see them. I stayed there a month and just about went insane out of
boredom. During that time I took alot of my old text files that I’d written
back in high school and put new Phone Losers headers and footers on them and
released them all as PLA files and uploaded them to a few bbses. This is
where PLA001 through PLA013 all came from.

Just a day or two after that, the whole Dino Allsman incident happened and
the next day I wrote PLA014 which details all the Dino events. Finally, I
left Illinois and took an Amtrack back to Austin. I ended up spending the
next night in Austin’s airport and since I’d slept in Austin’s airport for
many days in the previous month, the security lady said if I fell asleep in
the airport that night, she’d throw me out. So I whipped out the laptop to
stay awake and that’s when PLA015 (the one about beige boxing) was written.

The next day I took a smelly Greyhound Bus to Corpus Christi, Texas, got an
apartment and started running a bbs called Whombat Communications. This is
where the rest of the PLA issues 016 – 034 were written. By issue 021,
Colleen Card had moved to Corpus Christi with me and we ended up meeting Nova
Storm/Monster Magnet, H00ters and Calimar. Everyone in that town who didn’t
know us seemed to fear the PLA and the local internet provider hired an
investigator on us and told everyone he met that it would be his personal
mission to bring us down. What a weirdo.

During our last 6 months there, I really got into bbsing and started calling
BBSes all over the world, uploading PLA issues everywhere and begging the
sysops to create a directory for my stuff. After living there for almost a
year, we decided Corpus sucked so we took a vacation to Illinois and stayed
for a week. Zak & Company were nice enough to rent out a hotel room and throw
a party for us. I shudder at the memory of meeting Nekid Amy in person.
(Important Note: Cheap motel Bible pages do not make good rolling papers.

While spending our week in Illinois, the Belleville News Democrat did two
front page stories on the PLA and one editorial. After the first front page
story came out, I copied it and released PLA035. The day we left Illinois,
the police and Madison County authorities came with my arrest warrant. After
finding they’d missed me, they went to the St. Louis airport hoping to find
me there. Hehe, suckers.

We flew to Portland, Oregon and got a ride down to Albany, Oregon to live.
Big mistake. Albany is like a Jeff Foxworthy theme park. Big shiney belt
buckles, monster trucks and CB Radios prevail. Some of our roommates passed
their weekends by taking their monster truck to a mud pit and driving around
with the other trucks. They also liked to play CB tag where you drive around
town and figure out where the guy who’s “it” is broadcasting from.

When we arrived there I set up the Whombat Communications BBS again and
released PLA036 just so I could advertise the BBS. About a month later, I got
an account on a local internet provider called blitzinfo.com, set up a web
page called Whombat Communications and took the BBS down forever.

About this time, Zak and Apok0lyps had pooled their money to start a new
business in Granite City, Illinois called RoyCo. They rented out a building
and started selling computer systems and eventually set up an internet
provider called spiff.net. Since blitzinfo.com was only up about 10 hours a
day (a bunch of idiot teenagers ran it) I moved Whombat Communications to
spiff.net and creatively named it the Phone Losers of America Web Page.

Months later Zak, Apok0lyps and Dazen moved to Corpus Christi, Texas,
shutting down RoyCo and leaving spiff.net in the hands of a guy who doesn’t
know a fucking thing about computers. Eventually he terminated my account and
I moved the PLA web page to peak.org. During our stay in Albany, we released
PLA037 – PLA041.

We lasted in Albany for over a year, then packed up the car, rented a U-Haul
and drove to Celina, Ohio making a short pitstop in Illinois as usual. Most
of PLA042 was written during our stop in Illinois and the rest of it was
released in Celina along with PLA043 through PLA046.

Around the end of April 1997 I made the decision to stop running the zine.
It’s something I’d thought about doing for awhile but just never got around to
doing. Originally I was going to simply quit writing and delete PLA046 which
was in progress but Colleen convinced me it’d be best to finish 46 to give
everyone an explanation and to ensure that nobody would take over without our
permission.

PLA001: How to hack a WWIV bbs. During my sophomore year in high school,
Chris Tomkinson (yes, Chris Tomkinson) taught me a trick that someone else
had taught him to get into a WWIV bbs’s DOS prompt. (And there were about
20-30 WWIV bbses to choose from in that area. Man, 618 sucked.) Anyway, it
involved extrapolating the COMMAND.COM file, causing an error and giving you
a DOS prompt. We stayed up a few nights in a row, getting into kid’s computers
and nosing around. After awhile, we couldn’t resist and we started changing
things around on their bbses, such as their logon screens (Welcome to the 618
Gay Support BBS!), downloading their USER.DAT files (giving us everyone’s
passwords) and adding news subs for people to post on. After a few months it
got really out of hand and people were wanting to lynch us. (Security leak,
everyone figured out that it was us.) A few months after that, I started
getting mail from all these people begging me to teach them how to hack WWIV
bbses. Sick of it, I wrote this file just to annoy them.

PLA002: How To Build A Red Box. I’d been red boxing for about a year, using a
portable tape recorder. One night some friends took me to some guy’s house in
Belleville, IL and this guy was impressed to see that red boxing still worked.
He showed me an issue of 2600 that had the article on how to turn a tone
dialer into a red box and asked me if I could build one for him. I did, and
so I copied the 2600 article into PLA002. Over the years, I’ve added new
techniques as I’ve learned about them

PLA003: Getting Revenge. Originally, the name of the person being tortured in
this file was Darin McCall, someone me & Chris Tomkinson used to pick on for
being lame. By the time this became a PLA file, Chris had pissed me off so I
redid the whole thing using Chris’s name.

PLA004 – PLA006: These three files were written in the 24 hour computer lab
at IUPUI, the local college in Indianapolis, Indiana. I usually spent every
night there because I was homeless and it was cold outside.

PLA007: Numbers to Call When You’re Bored. This originally was titled
FUNNUMBS.TXT. I uploaded it to Ripco BBS, accidentally lost my copy and
forgot I wrote it. Almost a year later, I logged on to Ripco and saw it there,
downloaded it, updated it and turned it into a PLA file. Since numbers change
all the time and new ones turn up, I created the PLA Phone Directory, which
is the same thing only bigger and released quarterly. (or yearly)

PLA008: Ruining The Life Of A 7-Eleven Employee. Most of this was actually
written while working at a 7-Eleven in Portland, Oregon. Having nothing
better to do at night (hell, I’m not going to do any actual work!), I would
bring my laptop and one night started compiling a list of things customers
did to piss me off. Then I started adding things that they could do. Then I
just started making things up. (You’ll see the pattern there.)

PLA009: The Jim Bayless Playwrite. Colleen Card wrote this around October 1994
for a school project. The whole thing was acted out in front of a class by her
and some classmates.

PLA010: Scanner Frequencies. I was trying to compile a list of scanner
frequencies and in hopes that maybe someone would mail me some more
interesting ones, I published this. It didn’t work, dammit.

PLA011: Phone Losers Fone Call Transcripts. Most of these transcripts are
transcribed directly from cassette tape and the others are done from memory.
Originally I was going to update this file every few months with new
transcripts but I never did.

PLA012: Converting Your 2400 Baud Modem To 14.4. After successfully pulling
off this scam twice at a local Wal-Mart, I had to brag about it to everyone
so I wrote this file. This was written while in high school and originally
titled, “Upgrading your 1200 baud modem into a 2400.”

PLA013: Fone Tricks & Petty Scams. This is another one written in the IUPUI
computer lab over a period of a few weeks. I was trying to compile a big
phreak guide out of all the cool texts files I could find and I wrote this
section as a part of the guide. Later I scrapped the whole idea but kept this
file and turned it into this PLA file a few years later.

PLA014: Cordless Phone Hell. This all happened while visiting my parents.
Every word of it is true. The day after the whole event happened and I was
sure that Dino wasn’t going to come over and blow my head off with his 12
gauge, I wrote this file from the tapes I had recorded, from memory and with

Zak’s help over the phone.

PLA015: Taking Beige Boxing To The Ultimate Limit. I wrote this one in the
Austin, Texas airport one night when I couldn’t sleep. (I lived there for a
few days after visiting my parents.) Of course nothing in the story is true
other than the fact that I really did live in Celina, Ohio for a few months.

PLA016: Deaf Fones, Phone Books & Phone Bills. I kept bugging the hell out of
Zak to write something for PLA. After weeks of pestering him, he finally
e-mailed this issue to me and told me to leave him the hell alone.

PLA017: Letters From The Phone Company. I was going through all my papers and
found a shitload of phone company letters addressed to me, mostly demanding
their money. At the time it seemed funny so I typed ’em all out and released
them. All of them are real except for the one obvious one.

PLA018: Kevin Mitnick Articles. I’d been a big Mitnick fan since I read
Cyberpunk so I started collecting all the newpaper articles and text files I
could find on him. I had intended to update this issue as things developed
but never got around to it.

PLA019: Fun With Call Forwarding. This was rewritten in Corpus Christi. It’s
an old file of mine (written in high school, I think) that I found so I
updated it and released it.

PLA020: Alternatives To CN/A. This is another old file I wrote during high
school. I actually made this list for myself so when I was looking for
somebody’s info, I could go down this list to make sure I didn’t forget
anything.

PLA021: I started getting really annoyed with e-mail asking me how they could
join the PLA so I wrote out this bogus application form in hopes of sending
the message, “Hello? It’s a zine, not a club?” Unfortunately, that didn’t work
and I still get a few e-mails per week like that.

PLA022: BBS Back Doors & Flaws. This one was written by Pestilence, my first
actual contributor. The only problem with it is that he kept mixing all the
facts with jokes so I have no idea what’s real and what’s bullshit.

PLA023: Long Distance Access Codes. This file has got to be the most useless
one yet, but I spent so long scanning out all those access codes that I
couldn’t just let it sit around in a file forever. Even if you live in Corpus
Christi, this is probably mostly outdated by now.

PLA024: Dabbling in Credit Card Fraud. I happened to be writing this file and
finishing it up right around the time I got busted for credit card fraud in
Corpus Christi. After I was released and awaiting trial, I thought that maybe
it wouldn’t be such a good idea to publish something like this and I erased
the whole thing. Then, a month later, all charges against me were dropped so
I figured what the hell and re-wrote it. Don’t you love this country?

PLA025: Taking Over Fred Meyers From The Comfort of Your Own Home. This was
written from the experience of taking over the Fred Meyers paging systems all
over Portland, Oregon. I decided to wait to release it until I moved outta
Portland.

PLA026: Detailed Information On Various Phone Offices Around The Universe.
This one shouldn’t have been released but I accidentally made it available
for download on my bbs, so I just left it like it was. Surprisingly, nobody
complained and told me how stupid it was.

PLA027: Nursery Rhymes For Baby Phreaks & Other Perverts. Colleen Card wrote
all of these while she was living in Oregon and I was in Corpus Christi,
Texas on a crappy IBM typewritter and mailed them to me to turn them into a
PLA file.

PLA028: Ordering Telephone Calling Cards. This was written in response to
some guy on a local bbs asking me how to order calling cards for people.

PLA029: Stealing TCI Pay Channels. This one is really dumb but hey, I was a
sucker for article submissions and printed it anyway.

PLA030: This one was the first to be in a “magazine issue” format and I guess
was the beginning of our transition from a text file group to an e-zine. By
the time it was written, the zine had become quite popular so I began
explaining why the issue was late, one thing led into another and I ended up
spending a few hours writing that intro about us chasing some guy across the
country.

PLA031: Acidflux’s Story Time Hour. I thought this was rather amusing so I
published it. This story also appears in one of the issues of Delirium’s zine.

PLA032: I had intended to publish a large list of current CN/A numbers. Then,
realizing how in all the old CN/A text files I had, none of the numbers
really worked, I decided to instead explain how to get your own CN/A numbers
and codes. The RiGHT BRiGADE article had nothinig to do with phones but for
some reason I liked it.

PLA033: After recieving my Roy, New Mexico phone book, I couldn’t resist
publishing all six pages of it. By the the whole Roy, New Mexico was sort of
a private joke between all the PLAers.

PLA034: Most people hated this issue which is understandable. It was written
after I’d had three slightly amusing experiences with the bbses in Illinois
and I’d captured most of the posts surrounding the events. Now that I look
back on it, only the Greg Carson story was even worth publishing.

PLA037: I’d learned about FACS in Corpus and wanted to keep the information
all to myself so nobody would abuse them but by the time we’d moved to Oregon
I figured what the hell and wrote a FACS article anyway.

PLA038: BustCon was written almost 8 months earlier but I could never get
around to finishing it. Finally I did and released it in this issue. This was
also written in my OCI prime when I just couldn’t leave those operators alone
so I wrote the OCI article hoping to get more people to call them just so I
could see how they dealt with it.

PLA040: Colleen’s Extremely Useful Isue. People were actually pissed that this
issue was written. I got e-mail from people telling me how stupid PLA had
become and that they were never going to read PLA again. These people
probably assumed we were being serious or something.

PLA044: I wrote the 900 Profiting article after Gwonk had asked me how it
could be done.

PLA045: The cordless phone scene article was supposed to be an entire issue
to itself but I ran out of ideas and felt it was only worthly of an article.

PLA099: DHate’s Unauthorized PLA. I was actually one of the last people to
get this issue. Everyone had gotten a copy of it except for me when dhate
disappeared so I think it was out a year before I finally got to read it.

[Yes, I know I left a few issues out. I’m lazy.]

Wow. Apparently, people actually read PLA #44 and some of it registered in
their brains. I say this because I actually got email about my QuickService
article. Two people told me that other RBOC’s had similar services (Ameritech
and NYNEX) but I only got the Ameritech number. It’s 800-873-5501 and I got a
message about it being “unavailable at this time, our hours are…” when I
called from PacBell territory, so there’s a good chance it’ll work from every-
where in the country. I called at 1:16am though, so I could be wrong…

Anyway, here’s the first piece of email I got (I blanked out his name because
he said he didn’t want any credit, but I’ll give you a hint: his first name is
Kevin):

From xxxxxxxx@andrew.cmu.eduSun Mar 16 15:11:35 1997
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 1997 17:56:39 -0500 (EST)
From: Kevin P xxxxxxxx
To: pneyz@armory.com
Cc: Kevin P xxxxxxxx
Subject: ..

Re: your article on harassing people by ordering phone services:

Ameritech still has a line that you can call to check someone’s bill,
but you need the last 4 of their SSN. It’s 800-873-5501. Before I left
for school last August, I remember using the service with only a phone
number. But if you’re really trying to make someone miserable, you’re
going to need their SSN anyway.

Having access to many “public” computers at a university, I’ve “heard”
that an effective way to obtain one’s SSN is to use a combination of
Hotmail or Netaddress and one of the private eye services on RBCP’s PI
page. (Unless, of course, you’re going to use your own credit card to
do the SSN lookup.)

Over here in Bell Atlantic territory, I’ve found that ordering services
is usually a bitch and a half. Observations:

1) You can get somebody’s account number by going to the “question about
your bill” service, asking some stupid billing question, and then asking
for the “number to write on my check”. This service will also give you
their balance.

2) Every time you call about an account, it’s logged. My *guess* is
that they know when they’ve given out the account number, so it won’t be
worth anything as a form of verification afterwards. (Do I see a
chicken and an egg here?)

3) To order UltraForward ™, which is just remote-access call
forwarding, you need the following (at the very least – I’ve never tried
it knowing the victim’s SSN) :

Residence: SSN, or (account number + last payment amount + DOB?)

Business: They insist on calling the business back to confirm, or
getting confirmation on business letterhead. My (albiet lame and
limited) attempts at SEing my way out of this one have failed,
especially when they read their caller ID display and say “you’re at a
payphone”. Go figure. I haven’t had time to try op-diverting and SEing
them. One time, they gave me the business owner’s name and I “didn’t
recognize it”. They then told me I was at a payphone, and inserted a

memo in the account saying that they now require a note on company
letterhead to active UltraForward. Whoops.. (They were also able to
tell me that I had called 3 times previously in the same day, trying to
order the service.)

Hope this helps.. oh and if you want to use this info in a future
article, I don’t want/need any credit.

The next guy was quite a bit more brief. I replied and asked him for the number
but so far, he hasn’t replied.

From coaxial@nac.netMon Mar 17 16:08:15 1997
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 03:37:11 -0500 (EST)
From: coaxial coaxial@nac.net
To: pneyz@armory.com

In regards to your QuickService article in the recent PLA mag…
NYNEX has offered an automated pin-based service exactly like that for
many years.

-coaxial

After you try this you’ll never be thursty or outta change, because this shit
really works!!! I used to get $20 in change from Coke machines at my school!
The whole concept is that you tape the dollar a special way, so when you put
it into the machine, you pull it out, it’s really cool, you not only get
change, but you get a free Coke.

Just before you learn how to do this, let me clear up MY ASS, I haven’t gotten
caught yet doing this, and this doesn’t work on every Coke Machine. This is
really wrong and it’s against my moral and religious standards to steal from a
machine, which hard working people designed so people like yourself can get
free drinks from them.

Here’s how you do it… But again I have to expand on how this doesn’t work
on all Coke machines. The best ones are the really old ones. When I went to
Ocean City, New Jersey, I must of came out with $80.00 in quarters!!! I heard
that this works on some change machines but I’ve personally tried it around
the city and I can’t get it to work. So you if you come across one, YOU DIDN’T

HEAR IT FROM ME!!! Syke, I don’t give a shit.

Preparing The Dollar :

Get a new-crisp one dollar bill (No rips or anything because you want to be
sure the dollar will go in. Go out to F&M or People’s Drug and buy some
packaging tape (I’ve tried this with other kinds of tape but this is the
strongest.) Now if you examine a Coke machine (Hopefully not to long because
people will think you’re some kind of Stupid Fuck) Now remember the direction
of the dollar. Now place the dollar on the table or some place and make it so
it looks as if you were putting it into the dollar thing on the machine. Take
the tape and place it on the end of the tape (right over the border of the
dollar.

Make the tape real long, then fold it over so both sides of the dollar’s
border are taped. (There cannot be any air pockets or bubbles in the tape but
if you’re not retarted, you just might be able to handle such a task. Make
sure the tape is about 6 to 8 inches so you can pull it out without have the
dollar be sucked in (6 to 8 inches only works with Coke machines). Making it
really long like about (15 to 20 inches) will allow you to do it on any
machine.

Making It Work :

Go to a Coke machine (I guess it has to be one with a dollar thing.) Now put
the dollar in, but hold onto the tape. Some machines have real strong grip and
it might tear your dollar if you try to pull it back out. SO HOLD ON TIGHT! As
the machine sucks in the dollar, be ready to pull it out. Pull it out (Kind of
like sex) when the dollar is almost completly sucked in, but if you pull the
dollar out too fast it either won’t work or it will ripp your dollar. So you
have to pull it out nice and slow, but not too slow because it won’t work.
Just nice and easy.

If you did it right you should hear several clicks, if you don’t than you’re
stupid because you didn’t do it right. But if you aren’t stupid and you hear
the clicks than that means it works!!! Wow!!! Neato Burrito!!! Now choose a
drink, and get your change. It’s not that hard but for those exceptionally
stupid asses that can’t get it, they will have to try again. I do this over
and over again until dimes and nickels start to come out. When that happens,
you know you cleaned that machine out!!!

Is It Me Or Am I Just Stupid?:

Unfortunally, it just might not be you (but I say it probably is.) Anyway, on
some of the newer Coke and Most Pepsi machine it doesn’t work with such a
short piece of tape. THE SOLUTION though is… LONGER TAPE!!! Here’s how…
Instead of making the tape just 6 to 8 inches make it 15 to 20 inches! The
other change is when you put the dollar in, you have to LET the machine suck
it in ALL THE WAY, and when it stops, then you get a good grip on that tape
and pull like shit until that dollar comes back out. This method works on
every machine that takes dollars known by myself and my co-anarchists.

DANGER!!! DANGER!!! DANGER!!!:

A kid I knew got caught doing this up at the community colege. He got caught
because there were HIDDEN cameras and he was doing it in the middle of the
day, it’s really not that great of an idea also to do it in the middle of the
night, I mean, Cops that drive by like at midnight and they see you and your
friends hanging around a Coke machine (That looks very suspicious) You think
your all bad think’N the cops don’t care, YOU’RE FUCKED because Cops know all
the tricks and ways to scam things like this and they know what to look for
(So you’re Wrong, & not cool any more, because your letting something that you
read, scare you!!!)

HELL, for all you know, I could be shitting bricks about all this crap, But
am I? And don’t tell all of your friends because that’s what messed everything
up at my school. I mean, since everything or alot of people knew about it,
they did it, and that’s like taking your money and your drinks (“HOLY SHIT!!!
WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT!”) The best time to do it is about 2:00pm to 4:00pm
because school gets out at 2:00 and so people will just think your getting a

few drinks. And if you do it near 4:00 people will think you just getting a
Coke.

If that school catches on about the scamming, then STOP IMEDIATELY! And for
sure, they’ll change the Old Coke machine with a New One. But that’s why you
understand “Is It Me Or Am I Just Stupid” Because that works on practically
ALL Coke machines. It doesn’t take a little Practice.

Precautions:

It’s not that hard to carry around a taped dollar, but when you find the right
machine and get around 20 Cokes and $10.00 in change, I mean, you gotta have a
back pack or something to carry all them Cokes. Or I used to drive to
elementry or middle schools and sell them for like a quarter or something like
that. It’s just a quick way to get more profit. BUT -[ D O N ‘T ]- sell them
around where you got them, BECAUSE YOU’RE FUCKED! Remeber, people aren’t
stupid, so you just gotta use some common sense and don’t become MONEY HUNGRY
because those are the people that get caught.

Well, there I was one morning, fast asleep, and dreaming of tacos and stomach
acid, when all of a sudden I was awakened by the sound of….MY PHONE (I bet
you didn’t see that one coming, did ya?). So I stagger on over to my phone,
look at my call display and see REIS F 905-459-1286. So I pick up the phone.

ME: “Hello?”

Now the person on the other end starts shouting some foreign language
gibberish at me.

ME: “Uhm, what was that?”

Then he hung up on me! God damn him. So, I have a shower, eat some
spinach, stroke my beard, and finally decide to phone him back.

REIS: Hallo?
  ME: Yeah, you phoned me earlier and hung up, why?
REIS: Haha, no english
  ME: Thats very intersting, now why the hell did
      you wake me up at 10 in the morning!@#$
REIS: I'm sorry, no english
  ME: SO FUCKING LEARN
REIS: Ok, no english, good bye.

Well that was all fine and dandy with me. I had time to burn. So I called a
friend over. We decided to phone him back again.

REIS: Hallo
  ME: HI! Is Dave there?
REIS: No english, bye now
  ME: I didn't ask if you speak english, now,
      is Dave there?
REIS: No english! (sounding frustrated) No Dave!
      (More frustrated)
  ME: Dave? Is that you, oh Dave, you're a crazy guy.
REIS: NO DAVE!

Then he hung up, I phoned him about 10 more times from my house, but all of
the conversations were about the same as above. We got bored so we decided to
go out for awhile. Before we left I put a few faxback services on his phone
number. We were sitting in McDonald’s when I spotted a payphone. I whipped out
my quickchange card that my girlfriend gave to me and we proceeded to call
about 30 times within 2 hours. Here is one of the more amusing and original
conversations.

  ME: DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE DAVE!
REIS: YOU! PHONE PHONE PHONE LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH! WHY YOU DO THIS!
  ME: Listen up Dave, Dave Dave Dave, and Dave Dave Dave
REIS: THATS IS IT! YOU CALL AGAIN I CALL COPS
  ME: Please, anything but that! I'll touch you anywhere you
      want, but dont call the cops.
REIS: NO MORE! (Then he started yelling at us in what I
      assume to be his native language.)
  ME: Pardon me sir, I didn't quite catch that last sentence
REIS: NO MORE! I CALL COPS!
  ME: MAYBE I SHOULD CALL THE COPS ON YOU MOTHER FUCKER!

Then I slammed down the phone. I sure told him. I decided that I was very
sorry for yelling at him. I decided that he might be hungry, so I sent him
4 pizzas, a bucket of chicken, and some chinese food. Then my friend started
feeling bad about it to, so he sent over 5 taxis just in case this nice
fellow wanted to go out somewhere. And I was feeling extra special nice
so I got a plumber to go over and fix their toilet. I’m so nice. We decided
to phone back and ask him how he felt about us.

REIS: Hallo? (sounding agitated)
  ME: Will you be my friend Dave? Please
REIS: YOU VERY FUNNY! LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH
      (Then he started yelling again.)
  ME: Hey, that wasnt nice you ungrateful fucker,
      I want my pizzas back
REIS: You phone, you send things, why? What did I do?
  ME: YOU WOKE ME UP

Then I hung up. The next day me friend phoned, imagine his surprise when an
english-speaking woman answered!

    WOMAN: Hello?
MY FRIEND: Hello, is my pal Dave there?
    WOMAN: No, but Officer Smith is, would
           you like to speak to him? (you
           can hear Mr. Reis yelling in the
           background, he's really not happy)
MY FRIEND: That depends, is it officer Dave Smith?
    WOMAN: Smartass
MY FRIEND: Bitch

Then he hung up. gee I hope Officer Smith doesn’t come make my ass bleed
or something, that would be horrible. Somewhere around this time Logic Box
(there, I mentioned you, will you stop touching my cat?) made a .wav of
Mr. Reis whining about not being able to speak english, its pretty funny.
Anyway I think I might go to his house one day and set it on fire, I’m not
sure yet. Oh well, thats my spiffy little article. I’ll end it with a
conversation with whom I am quite sure is Mr. Reis’s granddaughter.

HER: Hello?
 ME: Hi! Is Dave there? (I can hear Mr. Reis yelling
     in the background. He sure yells alot, doesn't he?)
HER: Uhm, no.
 ME: You're a god damn liar! I can hear him!
HER: That not Dave, thats my granpa.
 ME: Why is he yelling so loud?
HER: I don't know.
 ME: I do, it's because you are a very big disappointment
     to him, and he doesn't like you.
HER: Who is this?
 ME: Did you know your grandpa is a Dave?

She sighs and hangs up. Oh well, since he phoned me that one morning he’s
probably received about 200 phone calls from me, Logic Box (leave my cat
alone!) and a few other people. Oh well. I hope you hate this article!
FLAP!@#$% -velocity@ionsys.com

/echo r0y.irc, a cheap ripoff of [SlAcK.aCt]
assign ex [r0y]
assign pk [ph34r th3 PLA!]

alias beat {me beats the living fuck outta $0}
alias point {me points at $0}
alias spit {me spits on $0}
alias nuts {me kicks $0 in the testies}
alias nod {me nods in agreement}
alias hate {me HATES $0 with a passion}
alias blow {me blows $0's fuckin head off with his Glock}
alias slap {me pimp slaps $0}
alias punch {me punches $0 in the fucking ribs}
alias beer {me slams a beer}
alias keg {me jumps up, and does a 45 second kegstand;wait;say BURP!!!}
alias flip {me flips $0 the middle finger;wait;say FUCK YOU $0!!!!}
alias dumb {me thinks $0 is a dumbass}
alias tired {me is tired}
alias hmm say hmmmmmmmmmm...
alias clap me applauds
alias evilgrin {me grins evilly}
alias wiz me has to take a piss. Be right back.
alias cactus me beans $0 with a cactus.
alias enema {
     me looks at $0 and decides he could use an enema.
     me rummages through his garage and finds a chainsaw.
     me pulls the cord and jams it up $0's ass.
     eval kick $C $0 *BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!*
}
alias porno {
     say dazen shows $0 his dick and some KY.
     say Suddenly some cheap 70's porno film music comes on.
     say $0 decides he'd prefer not to take chances and runs like fuck.
     eval kick $C $0  Don't let the door hit ya on the way out!
}
alias rambo {
  @old_nick=[$N]
  nick Rambo
  WAIT
  me sees that $0 is a real fucking faggot
  say I hate faggots
  me pulls up in his M-1 tank and $0 starts running like a fuck
  me fires his 150mm tank round up his flapping faggoty asshole
  EVAL kick $C $0
  WAIT
  me leaps out of his tank and lights up a Marlboro
  EVAL msg $0 Nuff Said!
  nick $old_nick
}
alias wolv {
  @old_nick=[$N]
  nick Wolverine
  WAIT
  me stumbles into $C after going on one of his drinking binges.
  me pops his adamantium claws and accidentally trips slashing $0 in half.
  me looks at $0's bloody corpse.
  say Too bad you don't have a healing factor huh, bub?
  EVAL kick $C $0
  WAIT
  me orders another beer!
  EVAL msg $0 I'm the best at what I do.  Don't mess with me, bub!
  nick $old_nick
}
alias lamer {
  me *** LAMER PROTECTION ENGAGED ***
  me Weeeeeeep! Weeeeeeep! Weeeeeeeeep!
  me Lamer spotted!! Lowering targets on the lamer!
  EVAL msg $0 Tag, your it!
  EVAL kick $C $0 $pk
}
alias behead {
     me puts on his black hood.
     me escorts $0 to the guillotine.
     say Any final requests before the blade drops?
     say No ? Good!
     /kick $C $0 $pk
     say -CHOP!-
}
alias nirvana {
  me suggests that $0 do his Kurt Cobain impression.
  me watches as $0 props a shotgun to his mouth and blows his brains out.
  me waits for three days before an electrician finds $0 and throws him out.
  /kick $C $0
  That's not teen spirit you smell...
}
alias suckoff {
  me looks over and sees $0 desperately trying to bend far enough to suck himself off.
  me wonders why no one else has kicked him for such pathetic behavior.
  me notices that no one else is paying attention to him.
  /kick $C $0 Try #jack-off!
}
alias god {
  @old_nick=[$N]
  nick I_am_g0d
  WAIT
  me steps out of the shadows and places his hand on $0.
  say Alas for you my poor child, there can be no redemption.
  me sucks the life out of $0 as they fall into a lifeless heap.
  mode $C +b $0
  EVAL kick $C $0
  WAIT
  me steps back into the shadows.
  EVAL msg $0 Don't fuck with God!
  nick $old_nick
}
ALIAS HYPER {
  @old_nick=[$N]
  me grabs $0 and starts to pour can's of Jolt down his throat.
  me watches as $0 starts to quiver.
  say And We Have Lift Off
  eval kick $C $0  Go calm down!!!
}
alias fart {
  me lets out a long rip roaring fart.
  say blurp...thip thip thip...blurp
  say ahhhhhhhhhh....much better...
  say Run for your lifes!!! ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
}
alias jolt me slams a Jolt.
alias acthelp {
  echo          .            Action Help
  echo          .       =====================
  echo          .  /actions    - For General Actions
  echo          .  /khelp      - For General Kicks
  echo          .  /m8help     - For Mystical Orb
  echo          .
}
alias actions {
  echo Actions you can use...
  echo ======================
  echo beat, point, spit, nuts, nod, hate, blow, slap, punch, beer, keg,
  echo flip, dumb, tired, hmm, clap, evilgrin, wiz, cactus, fart, jolt,
  echo pr0ncow
}
alias khelp {
  echo Misc. Kicks
  echo ===========
  echo enema, porno, rambo, wolv, lamer, behead, nirvana, suckoff, god, hyper
}
alias pr0ncow {
   /msg $0
   /msg $0            (___)
   /msg $0            (o o)  <===== dazen
   /msg $0      /------\\ /   (__)
   /msg $0     /    ____O    (oo)   <===== el_jefe
   /msg $0    |   / /----\\----\\/
   /msg $0    /\\oo===|  /    ||
   /msg $0   | ||   *||^-----||
   /msg $0   *  ^^   ^^      ^^
}

assign rv  E-=R=-

^assign m8resp[1] AS I SEE IT YES
^assign m8resp[2] ASK AGAIN LATER
^assign m8resp[3] BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW
^assign m8resp[4] CANNOT PREDICT NOW
^assign m8resp[5] CONCENTRATE AND ASK AGAIN
^assign m8resp[6] DON'T COUNT ON IT
^assign m8resp[7] IT IS CERTAIN
^assign m8resp[8] IT IS DECIDEDLY SO
^assign m8resp[9] MOST LIKELY
^assign m8resp[10] MY REPLY IS NO
^assign m8resp[11] MY SOURCES SAY NO
^assign m8resp[12] OUTLOOK GOOD
^assign m8resp[13] OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD
^assign m8resp[14] REPLY HAZY TRY AGAIN
^assign m8resp[15] SIGNS POINT TO YES
^assign m8resp[16] VERY DOUBTFUL
^assign m8resp[17] WITHOUT A DOUBT
^assign m8resp[18] YES
^assign m8resp[19] YES DEFINATELY
^assign m8resp[20] YOU MAY RELY ON IT
^assign m8resp[21] YEAH, SURE, WHY NOT?

^assign m8ans_num 21

alias m8desc1
{
  /say r0y slowly rotates the cactus of many answers...;
  /say r0y gently strokes the cactus, like dazen on a cat...;
  /say r0y stops the cactus' rotation and peers into it's depths...;
  /say r0y looks up, and utters the words:;
}

alias m8desc2
{
  /say r0y reaches into the nether void...;
  /say r0y withdraws his hand, which now grasps the cactus.;
  /say r0y considers the cactus...;
  /say r0y looks startled... and gulps...;
  /say r0y utters a spell of protection... and says:;
}

alias m8desc3
{
  /say r0y extends his hand and mumbles an incantation...;
  /say r0y stares at you as the cactus forms in his palm.;
  /say r0y appears visibly shaken as he studies it for a couple of seconds...;
  /say r0y lifts his head and breathlessly states:;
}

alias m8desc4
{
  /say r0y waves his staff in the air... leaving a dark mist in it's wake.;
  /say r0y cackles evilly as you watch the mist congeal into the legendary cactus.;
  /say r0y considers the cactus of telling as it hovers in the air... and states:;
}

alias m8desc5
{
  /say r0y claps his hands together...;
  /say r0y grins as the cactus appears, spinning in the air before you.;
  /say r0y grabs the cactus from the air & peers into it's depths...;
  /say Listen carefully, to the words of the r0y:;
}

alias m8desc6
{
  /say r0y extends his arm before you, and closes his hand around empty air...;
  /say r0y slowly opens his fist... you see the cactus of telling grow in his palm;
  /say r0y considers the cactus for a time... you squirm in your seat.;
  /say r0y lifts his head, meets your eyes, and says:;
}

alias m8desc7
{
  /say r0y shows you his empty hands and frowns.;
  /say hmmmmmmmm... 'syzygy'... ahhhhhh....;
  /say r0y chuckles evilly... you glance down and see the cactus in his hand.;
  /say r0y glances and the cactus... blinks... and stares at you;
  /say Beware!! The answer may not be what ye seek, but 'tis truth:;
}

alias m8desc8
{
  /say r0y ponders the if dazen is really a queer...;
  /say r0y runs his fingers through the scraggly growth on his chin...;
  /say r0y raises the cactus of telling in his gnarled hand...;
  /say r0y considers the cactus... for quite some time...;
  /say Ahhh.... the orb of r0y speaks:;
}

alias m8desc9
{
  /say r0y appears enlightened;
  /say r0y picks up the cactus, and considers it...;
  /say r0y clears his throat, and states:;
}

alias m8desc10
{
  /say r0y utters a dwarven curse... "GO AWAY PLA!!!";
  /say r0y morphs into a nude Colleen Card!
  /say A cactus is in her hands.;
  /say She chuckles... you look at the cactus, and see:;
}

^assign m8read_num 10

alias r0y
{
  /me reaches into his cloak.... and withdraws a midget...;
  /me holds the midget before you... He introduces himself as r0y;
  /say r0y shows you the cactus of telling!;
  /say r0y whispers, "Behold the cactus of telling"  You cover your eyes in Ph34r.;
  /say  r0y stares at you with one beady eye and chuckles evilly...;
  /say The cactus will answer aye/nay questions...;
  /say ask a question... and ph34r it's power!!!; }

alias cactus
{
  ^assign m8read $rand($m8read_num)
  @ m8read = m8read + 1
  ^assign m8ans $rand($m8ans_num)
  @ m8ans = m8ans + 1
  /m8desc$m8read
  /say       $m8resp[$m8ans]
}

alias M8HELP {
  /echo r0y ver1.0b: Designed for the PLA by B187
  /echo =========================================
  /echo /cactus  "show" the cactus of telling
  /echo /r0y     answer a question
  /echo
}

#================================done

^eval echo $ex r0y.irc loading complete...
^eval echo $ex You're on your own shithead...

Lima Teen Held As Buck Passer - from the Daily Standard, April 23, 1997
TOLEDO (AP) - The U.S. Secret Service says a 16-year-old Lima area (30 miles
from Celina) boy has been arrested in Indiana for passing counterfeit bills
he allegedly made on a home computer. The arrest followed complaints this
month about bogus bills being circulated in Lima, Wapakoneta and Sidney.

Gary Bianchi, agent in charge of the Secret Service office in Toledo, said
the youth was taken into custody Friday in New Haven, Indiana after he and
two companions passed a phony $20 bill at a McDonald's restaurant. A store
clerk alerted a manager, who called police with a description of the car over
in a nearby neighborhood a short time later.

Secret Service agents contacted the boy's parents in Fort Shawnee and were
given permission to search the home Friday night. They found a computer
belonging to one of the parents allegedly used to make the fake bills, Bianchi
said. Hidden in the youth's bedroom were several sheets of paper, each with
two $20 counterfeit notes.

The boy, charged with a delinquency count of fraud, was being held in the Wood
Youth Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana. A 16-year-old girl and a 19-year-old
woman from the Lina area who were in the car with the youth were questioned
and released pending further investigation, Bianchi said.

The high school administration has published there 3rd policy geared towards
Gwonk because of the homework hotline havok he's created. His name and
examples were cited in each of the three. The other two are computer related.
One for crashing the system, the other for gaining supervisor access. Of all
of these, he was responsible, but had no punishment handed down because they
didnt understand how it was done, and this last one (the homework hotline),
was the fact that it wasnt my voice. (RBCP left a new welcoming HH message
after Gwonk supplied him with the password.)

"I know that 'gwonk' did the homework hotline thing, we just need to
find more evidence." -according to a teacher's son.

"Hey, 'gwonk', how's it going?" -high school Principal to Gwonk.

Backbytes - Pagers used in Red Attack - taken from the Fortean Times,
submitted by iamone.

China: The army of the People's Republic of China completed its first-ever
exercise in cyber-warfare in January, according to the Wall St Journal Red
terrorists practising for the forthcoming Third World War attacked the
SkyTel paging network, disrupting the sleep of thousands and bringing
sections of the US communications network to a grinding halt. What
particularly delighted the Chinese was that their victims did their work
for them.

At about 5am West Coast time, the SkyTel system sent out erroneous
call-me-back messages to more than 100,000 unwitting pager-owners. Thousands
reached into their handbags or bedside tables and dutifully tried to call the
mystery number. Most treated the call as a local number. Some reached the San
Francisco Theological Seminary. Another three dozen realised the number
wasn't a telephone number at all, but a pager code-number for another SkyTel
customer.

They then sent their telephone number to SkyTel, to be passed on to whoever
it was they thought was calling them. By that stage, the terrorists were back
home in their safe house, celebrating with a warming bowl of chow mein and
boiled rice. But the self-powering attack was still only in what militarists
like to call the 'softening up' stage.

The telephone numbers of the three dozen beeper addicts were broadcast by
SkyTel back to the original 100,000 pager owners. By now fully awake,
thousands of these people tried to call these three dozen. Communications
lines were snarled for 26 minutes. One victim received 625 voicemail messages
from all over the US. Another was relieved that he was fielding only 40 calls
an hour towards the end of the day, rather than the 300 he was getting at the
beginning of the day. SkyTel thought it was responsible for the mess, and
apologized to its customers via their pagers.

CyberGod k-lined from dalnet, kick off ISP - by RBCP
Until CyberGod hooks up with a new internet provider, he's banned from the
internet just for messing with people in the chat rooms. Sure, all the
regulars in #rock went a little too far by annoying #quiltchat and
#teens4jesus but this is hardly enough reason to AKill all 2,000 customers on
the same ISP as Cybergod.

After that happened, CG's ISP - Advanced Computer Connection - suspended his
account and eventally deleted it entirely. At one point CG didn't realize he
was talking to one of the owners of his ISP and called him a bitch and told
him the PLA ownz him. Whoops. They also claimed they were getting lots of
complaints about him and didn't approve very much of his web page, which was
actually quite innocent-looking.

What are you talking about? We don't have a war going on, YOU do. I could
care less what you do. I have far too many other things going on to have to
worry about you. My only problem with you is that you are harrassing my
family and my roommate. Calls by your immature freinds are annoying, but when
you call my house saying that I'm in jail and telling my roommate that you
have a calling card in his name, that pisses me off.

C'mon, it's almost 1995. Can't we let this crap drop? I bet you really think
you are getting to me, but I'm really indifferent to the whole thing. I've got
plenty of freinds, so I don't have to sit and worry why you're not one of them.
I'd like to be on peaceful terms with you (I really do mean this) but you seem
to insist on doing this.

You insult me. Do you actually think that I _pay_ for calls to your voice mail
box? I know we did this to Darin McCall, but it got pretty boring after two
years or so. We were also 17 year old punks with nothing else to do. Do you
still have nothing else to do? Is your life still based around being a pain
in the ass? If you don't want to discuss this reasonably, I'll see you in hell
or jail, whichever comes first.

I can't believe that you sit around and do that stuff all day. do you think it
really affects me? You seem to think that by trashing me all the time when I'm
nowhere around that it actually brings me down. Big fuckin deal.

You must really really hate me. You wouldn't be going this far for this long
if it was just some minor grudge. You must think that I totally fucked up your
life. Quite frankly your life was in the shitter by the time you first went to
Texas. You can't blame me for all your fuckups.

Maybe if you treated people as people and not as toys to play around with you
won't have this superficial Redboxchilipepper life. Go ahead and leave your
thought provoking messages on my machine this weekend. I won't be around that
much, as I have a few parties and engagements to attend. I'm so jealous of you.
Go ahead and mess with my credit cards. That's something i can really get you
nailed for.

Chris Tomkinson

[That was actually a compilation of e-mail he wrote to me in
1994 on a bbs.]

This is a transcript of a ground floor (local term for a one on one prank
phone call) I pulled on this loser Ryan Cheney. You see, Ryan has been
caught masturbating in school from time to time, and I thought to further
his humiliation...

Ryan: Hello?
 GAF: Hi, I'm with AdultFone.  May I speak with
      Mr. Ryan J. Cheney?
Ryan: (kinda scared) May I ask why you're calling?
 GAF: We want to offer him some free consultation and
      sampling.
Ryan: This is Ryan.
 GAF: Hi.  We at AdultFone realize the tenderness of
      the male needs.  I want to offer you a sample
      of our most basic phone sex services.
Ryan: Sorry man, I'm underage.
 GAF: We at AdultFone realize that, too.  That's why
      we're prepared to connect you to similairly
      nonadult females, who will perform excellently,
      as you will see.
Ryan: Hey man, that's kinda messed up.  Where'd you
      say you was from?
 GAF: AdultFone.  The South's first Adult Telephone
      Network.
Ryan: And you're not like, just joking are you?
 GAF: No.  I could patch you into a live conversation
      if you'd like.
Ryan: (a little pause) Sure.

(Enter my friends Ashley and Kevin. Ashley is 14, too young for me or Ryan
but what the hey, she was willing. Kevin is my age, 16.)

Ashley: And then what will you do?
 Kevin: I'll stick my big hot dick up into your ass
        so far that you'll taste it in your mouth.
        And then I'll pump you so full of cum it'll
        come out your nose.  And then...

(Clicking noise: Ashley and Kevin hang up the phones they were on, then
quietly pick them back up)

 GAF: That's a small sample.
Ryan: How old were they?
 GAF: I'm not allowed to disclose that, sir.
Ryan: And how much does this cost?
 GAF: Free sample of ten minutes, sir.
Ryan: Ten minutes?  Tell me.... (pause)
 GAF: Tell you what, sir?
Ryan: Tell me a little more, man.
 GAF: Very well... we employ women and men of the
      ages eight to eighteen, both African American
      and Caucasian, along with an occassional Asian,
      whom I might add are very good at what they do.
Ryan: Could you... like, customize who I talk to?
 GAF: Certainly, sir.  Just tell me the details and
      I'll patch you right in.
Ryan: Well, I want a younger girl.. like maybe eleven
      or twelve.  No, make
      it thirteen, if you've got one.  And I want...
      special stuff.
 GAF: Like?
Ryan: (pause) (bold) Surprise me.

(Enter my friend Jennifer. She's fifteen.)

 Jen: (husky voice) You want a surprise, big boy?
Ryan: Oh yeah.  Tell me what you want.
 Jen: I want you to know... that you've been
      GROUNDED BY THE FREAK SQUAD!
 GAF: Tell him what he's won, Jen!
 Jen: (really getting into it)  Public humiliation!
 GAF: That's right Ryan, you little prick!  Everyone
      will know!
Ryan: **** you!  You sons of ****es!  I hate you!
 GAF: But you sure do love those eleven and twelve
      year olds!

(At this point Ryan hangs up)

Hope you enjoyed,
Mountain King

I've been downloading miscellaneous text files on a local h/p/a/c/v BBS
and happened to come across these PLA issues. I wanted ask you how in the
hell did this whole PLA thing start? Where'd you get the idea? Did
everybody's abuse of phone and computer technology push you to setup this
whole "Loser Contest"?

P.S. In PLA034.txt specifically on lines 1304-1307 it says something
about you daring the reader to find an even lamer BBS than that TWiSTED
REALiTY crap. Well, I think I found a much worst BBS. Its called Magic-Tek
BBS. I can't really describe it well but I think the SysOp Gary Miller
would very easily make the loser list. The number is (714)633-1195.

Thanks,
Auslyn G Nieto

Ok I have been fucking with ONCOR "OCI, ITI, Willtell" for years now, just
like you. I have seen your messages about it, and your experiences are much
like mine. Here is the experiences-info I've compiled..

You probably know some of this info. When you hear the tone, you can punch in
the (ACN)XXX-XXXX of the calling from number. Then you punch in the
(ACN)XXX-XXXX of the number your calling too. This can save some time. But
more lame than anything.

If you call a person with Caller ID, whatever number you punched in or
whatever number you told the bitch will show on the receivers caller ID.
This was tested in Chicago IL. with Ameritech number. This is programmable
Caller ID!!!!! But if the person you are calling has strong ANI, your real
number will go through. Caller ID is ok, but real secure places will get
the number through ONCOR's system somehow. I had an agent call me one time
and he got my number with ANI through ONCOR.

They used to have a password system within ONCOR to tell who is really a
lineman-employee and who is not. Here are some of the old passwords.
SNOWFLAKE, ROSE, RAINBOW. I used to call, say I was a lineman, give her
the password, and then tell the bitch to kick the computer or take a break.

ONCOR has a very very limited ANI system. When you piss them off enough
they transfer to a guy in the computer department. I had this happen 2
times in one night. Now normally I would think no big deal but somehow the
guy can tell what state-area code your calling from and if you keep talking
to him he gets the city too. Maybe he's psychic maybe he has the hardware
to trace, who knows. I just hang up and stop calling for the next week or
so whenever I talk to him. He's real cocky, a little too sure of himself
and he's not faking it. I think that he's with some other line provider
company and he's helping them out. He sure got my city right. But I almost
never get transferred to him.

I used to be in a group called Abuse. Back 92-93' We were running
Alliances all night every night and we found a way to collapse ONCOR once.
The person with conference control would call a PBX first, then divert over
to ONCOR's 800-288-2880 number. When it would start to ring, we'd throw
em in the conference and immediately and call ONCOR again, throw them in
too. Repeat.. So anyway we had like 20-30 lines all ringing at once all
connected to our alliance. Some would disconnect eventually, but because
ONCOR is so polite, they would transfer the call then try and talk to us,
then disconnect. This gave us enough time to add at least 2-3 more lines
in the meantime. Anyway the noise in the conference from all the ringing
lines made it one solid ring. So we keep doing it for a few min and all of
a sudden we hear. Beedoop, Beedoop, Beedoop, BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBeedoop.
All of ONCOR's lines disconnected from the conference. "Bedoop is the leaving
the conference noise" Almost at once they all just disappear. Now we're
like, What the fuck happened" I call back ONCOR on my 3 way and now ONCOR is
BUSY.. ONCOR is busy!!! So we keep checking back and for the rest of the
night ONCOR is shut down!!! They came back up the next day but they were
never the same after that. If you threaten to fill all the lines and crash
them, they get paranoid and transfer you to some real high up people in the
company. This is when you run into the ANI, tracing dude. So watch it.

So there you have it. How to shut down ONCOR 101.
Later,
bomr

Dear RedBox,
I have a secret crush on an op in #rock. The only problem is
I am always kickbanned so I never get to express my true feelings
towards this individual. Can you help? If you can, please e-mail
me at peachey@concentric.net or call me at home. 617-639-0224.

Thanks,
Peachey

P.S. It's el_jefe! Please don't tell him or print this letter!!

[Peachey - I understand your lust for el_jefe as I also
find him very desireable. I suggest DCCing him tons of
aldut GIFs and dead animal pics as this is his major
turn on. Also he has a fetish about baking cookies with
women so ask him about that. I promise I will not let
anyone know that you wrote me concerning these matters.
Best of luck!]

Ok, this is my delima. Some big 18 year old asshole wants to kick my ass.
See, his girlfriend was telling me shit like how she broke up with him and
things, so I thought it be okay and all to flirt with her and shit, so I did,
and come to find out this monkey fucker was still going out with her, and she
was playing my ass. Well, he didn't take to me flirting with her to well,
maybe because of the fact that I had a friend tell her I was going to kill
him after I found out he wanted to kick my ass, but that's beyond the point.

See, my problem is, I want to harass this poor bastard, but I don't know
enogh information on him. I mean, I don't even have the basics, like his last
name or phone number. I do know his first name is Richard, and his e-mail
address is RichPDenn@aol.com, and he's going out with Aubrie Adams, whose
e-mail address is CowGrl8018@aol.com. Her phone number is 307-634-8848. Any
information you can gather is greatly appreciated, and if not, telling me how
to get this info would be cool too. This guy is in dire need of some
harassment, and bugging his online isn't cutting it anymore. Thanks for your
time. Any one who reads this, please bug Dick's ass, but leave Aubrie alone.
Destroy Dick.

EasyGenie

[Hopefully publishing the above info will assist you in your
quest for Richard's anialation. Remember - he can kick your ass
but that's nothing compared to the ruin to can create of his
life. In 5 years when you're still harassing him everyday, he'll
wish he hadn't done it.]

Fuck you, how dare you be such an asshole. Just take me off the list or I
will report you to the AOL people.

[Report me to the "AOL people"?? Oooooooo, scary. I hate to break
this to you, but I have nothing to do with AOL as you should have
been able to figure out from the e-mail address. Everyone who has
wanted off the list has replied with, "REMOVE" so apparently you're
the only idiot who hasn't grasped this.

By the way, I maintain a mailing list and the only people on it
are people who've asked to be on it so if you didn't subscribe to
PLA, then someone else subscribed you meaning I'm not the only
one who thinks you're an idiot. Have a nice day!

NOTE: This guy's letter was written to me after I'd released PLA045
and stated that anyone wishing to be taken off the mailing list
would have to e-mail me the following paragraph: "I suck. I no
longer wish to remain on your mailing list because I've turned
into a spincter boy and wear women's undergarments. I'll never
read another issue of PLA for as long as I live. I am the scum of
the earth. Remove me now." What a moron.]

I don't know if this will interest anyone but if you goto your local
'Bell Phonecenter' store they have phones on display. Now the majority
of the phones will let you dial out, so the other day while waiting to
be served I decided I would call up an ANI service (1-800-4-BLOCKME
works in canada) and see if it will spit back a number . Well sure
enough it did. So I wrote the number down and went to the payphone in
the mall while my friend waited in the phonecenter to see if the phone
would ring, sure enough it did. Lets just say that the employees are
quite confused on how 'someone' got the # of one of thier display
phones..

Anyways, that is just my 2 cents.
Whitey. whitey@mindless.com

Did you know Shoney's Inn and a bunch of other hotels serve free breakfast
in the morning? All you have to do is stop in and eat the donuts/bagels/
juice they have out for the guests.

Keith

[Damn, that's such an simple idea I feel like an idiot for
not thinking that up myself. Almost every hotel I've stayed
at has free breaskfast in the lobby, too.]

man, you got a helluva sight! i just came across this page yesterday and
already i have spent hours. i'm so impressed that i'd tell you what
happened to me and a scheme of mine. first off you gotta know i love video
games! i cant get enuff. now this was before i had webtv and ever seen your
sight but anyhew.

i used to rent games everyday but at $4 a pop i kept running into a cash
flow problem. i started thinkin of ways i could get games for cheap.
then i had an idea, buy a game, play it, re wrap it and bring it back
for a refund. then i said fuck that! buy a game, take it out, re wrap it
and get a refund.

so what i did was got a game from kay bee and took out the cd. i then
took the box it came in and wrapped it once in siran wrap. i looked for
my sisters hair dryer but i forgot i busted it. so, i had to find

another way to heat shrink it. first tho i needed to make it airtight so
what i did was took a knife and heated it on my stove, then i carefully
cut down the sides of the wrap and voila. i left the stove on
unintentionally and then i noticed the wrap started to shrink. there was
my answer. so i grabbed the game and held it over the stove. it looked
great except for the fingerprints that were left on. i even fooled some
friends of mine. i decided to take the game back on a busy day. i had a
friend go with me in case they caught on and grabbed me.

i proceeded with the plan. i acted like i got it for my cousin but he
already had the game. they asked if i wanted a refund or trade, of
course i said refund. the cashierkept looking at the box but then opened
the cash drawer. she handed me a sheet to fill out and as i was
scrawling a fake name i looked up and saw a manager opening the game. i
was thinking of what i could do. i decided to just walk out the door. as

i walked out, an employee wished me a good evening. i walked down the
stairs and blended in with the crowd. i was sure to take off my hat
and as i was walking quickly through the mall i managed to knock down a
few yoboy's. it was kinda funny listening to them yell at me acting like
they where black og pimp muthafucka's.

as my friend (who was incognito) walked out the kay bee door, he noticed
a manager looking around for me, as if i might be close tothe store or
something. it failed but it was pretty funny! i'll have to try again
sometime....

later
takahashi@webtv.net

Recently I was pranking OCI from a payphone and pretending to get
hysterical. The lady asked if I needed the police and I screamed YES!
Anyway, she connected me to her supervisor who said she was with the
police. I asked with what police department, and she said the OCI
police. I told her that I needed her to send someone down and help right
away, because OCI was breaking the law by not letting me make a collect
call to the Defcon voice bridge. She asked if she could help me make a
collect call, so I said yes, and she said "Well, alright, I'll try
calling that number, and if someone's there to accept the charges, I'll
put the call through". Anyway, that's the story of how I got the
operator to make a collect call to Defcon. Of course, the charges
weren't accepted, but I just can't get over how funny that whole
conversation was.

Another recent happening, an AT&T operator told me that there was a man
behind me when I was redboxing and that he was going to sneak up and
arrest me. To this day, I still havn't found this man following me. If
you have any information, please let me know as I'm desperate to find out
who this phantom is! (okay, so I don't actually beleive her. What do you
expect?)

wiretapp