Old Phones, Big Money

Texas man gets prison, restitution order in $2.4 million pay phone scam

Remember pay telephones?

Most of our readers are old enough to recall having to make sure you had enough change on hand when you needed to make a phone call while out and about. To younger readers who grew up with cell phones such things may be a vague memory at best, even a total mystery.

You can be sure one Texas man, though, will never forget the once-common devices.

David Grudzinski, 61, of Friendswood owned about 450 pay phones around Houston. While the pay phone business is probably not what it once was since almost everyone carries a cell phone these days, the enterprising Grudzinski found a way to make his investment pay.

And now that’s what he must do.

Last week Grudzinski was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to repay $2.4 million on charges of mail and wire fraud and money laundering. He pleaded guilty to the charges in April.

Authorities said that since 2005 the man had been using robocalling software to dial toll-free numbers—many government-owned—from his phones and collect about 49 cents for each call. Do that enough and it adds up. Big.

We hear a lot about new technology and scams. Apparently there is still money to be made with the old stuff, too.

But for now, the only number Grudzinski will have to concern himself about is one assigned to him by the state of Texas.