Willoughby Fair is, by all accounts, a crafty businessman. A businessman who federal agents say ran three phone companies.
Agents say he was adding phone charges to customers bills -- charges to South Florida residents and others -- for calls they didn't make. $34 million worth. And he allegedly did it all while he was behind bars in Palm Beach County.
"He was taking advantage of unsuspecting customers and was somehow able to do this from the jail," said Inspector Bladismar Rojo.
The federal indictments say Fair provided the billing information to carriers like Verizon and Quest, and prosecutors say Fair directed the operation though instructions he gave others somehow from inside the jail.
Agents believe that Fair pulled off the scam for more than two years and many customers didn't closely see their bills and didn't realize that overtime the overcharging added up.
The charges were normally on the last pages of the bill, and that increased the odds you wouldn't see them.
The victim list could run into the thousands. Federal agents said that you should pull out your bills and take a look -- something financial experts say we really should do each month, anyway.
The government is in the process of setting up a website to handle all the victims.
