Telecom blog – Calling cards, wireless service

FBI forgot to pay their phone bill

January 12, 2008 on 12:49 pm | In Humor, Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Telecommunications company cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals and terrorist because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday guilt lost connections on the FBI lax oversight of the money in the undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for the wiretaps from a telephone company, a total of 66000 dollars.

“We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence,” according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

More than half of the 990 bills to pay for the monitoring of telecommunications in five unknown FBI field offices were not paid on time, the report shows.

“While in a few instances, late-payment of telephone bills resulted in interruptions of the timely delivery of surveillance results, these interruptions were temporary and in our assessment, none of those cases were significantly affected,” assistant FBI Director John Miller said in a statement Thursday evening.

The audit also found that some field offices to pay for the costs, the undercover cases were funded by FBI headquarters. Out of 130 covert payments examined, auditors found 14 cases of at least 6000 dollars, where every field offices dipped into their own budgets to pay for the work that would have been adopted by the headquarters.

The faulty accounting was blamed, in large part, for an FBI employee who pleaded guilty in June 2006 to steal 25,000 dollars for their own use, the audit noted.

This is not very funny, but the using of prepaid calling cards will save you from cut off phone line. If FBI could not use the prepaid cards you can call with these and have connection anywhere.