FYI

Scam gives inmates control of your phone

'CHICAGO, Ill. (NBC Newschannel) - A new jail-house scam could cost you control of your telephone.

Christa Oody was home alone one recent night when her phone rang.

"I got a call from a prison with a 773 area code to accept a collect call," Oody explained.

The line went dead, but her phone rang again a few minutes later.

This time it was a live person who told her she had been listed as an emergency contact by someone in prison.

"My family has never been in trouble. They've never been in jail or anything like that. But anything can happen," Oody explained.

The caller, who said he was an officer with the jail, gave Christa a phone number to call for more information, with instructions to call * 72 before dialing.

Worried someone she knew must be in trouble Christa made the call.

She never got an answer, and her incoming calls stopped as well.

There was a reason her phone didn't ring.

By dialing that * 72 she effectively forwarded all of her calls to another phone number, which inmates then took over.

Christa Oody had unwittingly become victim of what appears to be a rampant calling scam.

Inmates, calling from payphones, hijack telephone numbers of their victims by posing as jail employees and convincing them to call a * 72 number.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart heard so many complaints from victims he posted a warning on his office Web site.

"You have 10,000 people who more often than not don't have a lot to do with their time so they are pretty clever and they'll think of ways to idle away the hours and one of the ways is to figure out the phone system," warned Dart.

"Don't pick up, don't pick up unless you have a loved one who is in the department of corrections for some reason," he added.'