NEW YORK : 2 Charged in Giant Cell Phone Scam

In what officials called the biggest scam of its kind, two people are accused of using a scanner on their windowsill to steal more than 80,000 cellular phone numbers from motorists driving past on a busy Brooklyn, N.Y., highway. The “black box” scanner, or digital data interceptor, was still picking up numbers from unsuspecting cellular phone owners when police arrived at a 16th-floor apartment and found it on the ledge, the Secret Service said. Members of an electronic fraud task force raided the apartment last Thursday and arrested Abraham Romy, 45, and his Russian-born girlfriend, Irina Bashkavich, 38, who recently became a U.S. citizen.