City looks into fake phone charges

NORWICH – City of Norwich officials recently noticed strange charges appearing on their phone bills. Investigation into the matter found charges for unsolicited services. City officials advise people to pay attention to their bills to make sure you aren’t paying the same charges.

At Thursday night’s Finance and Personnel Committee Meeting, City Finance Director Bill Roberts told the committee about unsolicited and unauthorized telephone charges for miscellaneous services. Telephone bills were sent to the City of Norwich with additional fees for services no one in the city requested.

“There were charges from companies for odd things like voicemail identity theft on lines that don’t even have voicemail,” said City Deputy Registrar Deana DuFour. The bills appeared slightly different than the normal bills, with strange logos appearing at the top. Three different companies had added unsolicited charges to the city phone bill. All of the bills apparently came out of the “billing clearing houses” process.