The State - News from March 11, 1985

Santa Clara County jailers are complaining that their charges have had a scam going to use the jailhouse telephones illegally, possibly costing more than $75,000 in unpaid-for long-distance calls. Sheriff’s officials said inmates at their maximum-security county jail have been placing long-distance calls with stolen access codes either bought from other inmates or obtained by “experimentation” with the number display on the buttons. The phone companies pirated were Sprint, U.S. Telephone Service of Texas and Satellite Business Systems of Virginia. The Santa Clara County jail population has had almost unlimited access to telephones, making many calls from portable instruments that are rolled from cell to cell in a cart.