![]() ![]() ![]() Knobel told the FTC that he was unaware that the telecom's clients were involved in any illegal activity, and said he had the audiotext phone numbers shut down as soon as he learned they were being used improperly. ![]() When the FTC filed official legal complaints in October 1997, Peter Knobel was named as a party because his company, Cayman Islands-based Beylen Telecom, owned the Moldova numbers. Investigators at the Federal Trade Commission traced the complicated long-distance chain to two web companies based in New York City: NiteLite Media and Audiotex Connection. Tens of thousands of consumers in the United States and Canada began complaining about the huge charges they were finding on their phone bills. In fact, the long-distance link would stay connected until the computer was turned off. Each line would stay connected to a number in the former Soviet Republic - collecting charges in excess of two dollars per minute - even after the user had migrated from the site. In 1997, Internet surfers looking for a good time on sites like and learned that they could access "MORE SEX for FREE" and "ALL NUDE ALL FREE PICTURES" simply by downloading special image-viewer software identified as "david.exe." But while the porn seekers were getting "FREE XXX IMAGES," the specially designed software secretly turned off their computer's modem volume, disconnected them from their Internet service provider, and reconnected them to phone numbers in Moldova. ![]()
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