Mmmh, I know this article. I already used it as an example in previous discussions or somewhere else. Yes Max was in but he was not arrested in the same context. The “Knight Shadow” affair with Kim, Killerette, Phone Stud etc. is this one:
USA v. Kim Schmitz et al: Indictment
Indictment in USA v. Kim Schmitz, a.k.a. “Kimble”; Ivy James Lay, a.k.a. “Knight Shadow”; Claude Oliver Bilak, a.k.a. “Killer”; Joshua Neil Freifield, a.k.a. “Legend”; Michelle Lillian Goodzuk, a.k.a. “Killerette”; Enoch John White, a.k.a. “Sonny”, a.k.a. “Phone Stud”; Ted Anthony Lemmy, a.k.a. “Speed Master”; Leroy James Anderson, a.k.a. “Major Theft”; and Frank Ronald Stanton, Jr., a.k.a. “Mystery”, at the U. S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.
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No Max here. And cost to phone companies (not profit for pirates) was estimated to “$23 million to $38 million”.
Other quote from your copy of the above article:
“Secret Service agents in Washington nabbed Frenchman Max Louarn in a sting for another calling-card scheme.”
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So there was another calling-card scheme, and it’s this one:
Guilty Plea in Multimillion-Dollar Phone Service Theft
AP , Associated Press
AP News Archive Oct. 26, 1994 6:34 PM ET
ALEXANDRIA, VA. ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) _ Federal prosecutors gained a second guilty plea Wednesday in a case involving up to $100 million worth of unpaid long-distance and international telephone calls.
Max Louarn, 22, of Palma de Mallorca, Spain, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiracy and wire fraud charges in the trans-Atlantic case investigated by authorities in the United States, Britain and Spain.
Louarn admitted to one count of wire fraud and one of conspiracy to trafficking in the calling card dialing codes issued by telephone companies to enable subscribers to make long-distance calls without paying cash.
Louarn and Andy Gaspard, 23, of Woodbridge, Va., were arrested in September. Gaspard pleaded guilty on Oct. 12 to charges of trafficking in the codes.
Court documents said Louarn, Gaspard and a third defendant, Omar Flatekval, 20, of Northumberland, England, illegally obtained and sold between 40,000 and 100,000 code numbers.
Flatekval was arrested in Britain and is under investigation there, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
The trio used computer bulletin boards in Europe and the United States to peddle the telephone credit codes, authorities said. Profits from the enterprise were not disclosed in the court documents.
But investigators for the major telephone companies that issued the codes estimated losses averaging $1,000 per stolen code number, or a potential total of $100 million, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Louarn faces a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment on each count and a minimum $250,000 fine when he is sentenced on Jan. 20.
He admitted taking delivery in Spain of about 40,000 calling codes issued by such companies as AT&T, GTE and Bell Atlantic allegedly stolen by Gaspard from a firm in Washington.
The count to which he pleaded guilty also covered participation in a related calling code conspiracy in Greensboro, N.C., involving distribution of up to 100,000 codes stolen in 1992-94 from an MCI switching facility.
The thefts involved illegal use of 11-digit dialing codes rather than actual pilferage of calling cards issued to telephone subscribers, prosecutors said.
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Here there’s also reference to Max involvement in the “Knight Shadow” affair. Also in a Washington Post article (not quoted here) it’s written that one of the indictees said that Max was the biggest worldwide reseller of calling cards.
Fyi, Englishman Omar Flatekval was Intreq, sysop of Living Chaos, Paradox HQ in the UK.
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Another article:
“BRITISH CALLING CARD BUST”
British students have taken part in an alleged £65m computer fraud,
involving the electronic theft of cards that allow users to make free
telephone calls around the world.
The hackers, one of whom was only 17 years old, were said to be earning
thousands of pounds a month selling cards… Police found one teenager
driving a new £20,000 car and with computer equipment worth £29,000 in his
bedroom.
AT&T officials also found a computer noticeboard called “Living Chaos”
that was being used to sell the cards for up to £30 each. It mentioned
Andy Gaspard, an employee of the Cleartel telephone company in
Washington, whose home was raided. “We found 61,500 stolen cards ready
to be sent to Britain,” said Eric Watley, a secret service agent in the city.
(The Sunday Times, 12 February 1995)
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Hope this helps…