Did Intruder Ring Up a $2,200 Bill?

After a yearlong search, Jean Williams thought she had found the perfect apartment: A cozy and affordable one-bedroom on a quiet North Hollywood street, far from the chaos of downtown where she works.

Then she got her first phone bill.

It was for $2,200, nearly half for telephone sex charges.

“I nearly hit the ceiling,” said Williams, 59, a soft-spoken woman who works part time for the Los Angeles Job Corps. “I thought what in the world is this all about.”

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On the first page of “the big bill,” as Williams calls it, were about $1,200 worth of calls to places ranging from Akron, Ohio, to Santiago, Chile.

“But it gets worse,” Williams said in a scandalous tone. Gripping the three-page bill as she stood in line to file a complaint at the LAPD’s North Hollywood Division, Williams looked around the room before whispering: “The rest of [the phone calls are] nothing but pornography.”

In a modern-day Goldilocks tale, someone broke into her apartment, apparently sat in her chair, ate her food and ran up thousands of dollars in phone calls while she was at work.

Two pages of Williams’ long-distance bill detail a spree of toll calls to sex talk services at a cost of about $1,000.

At first she thought the phone company had simply made a mistake. Williams said she indeed made some of the calls on the bill: One to her son in Minnesota and two other business-related calls, one to Santa Monica and one to Long Beach. Those calls account for $3, she said.

She first reported the problem to Pacific Bell. But when a representative told her the calls were placed from her home, “that’s when I got scared,” she said.

After telling her landlord, Williams learned that her locks were never changed, and several past tenants may still have keys.

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When she filed a criminal report Monday, Williams told police that a former tenant may have been entering her apartment while she was at work, using her phone and, she alleges, raiding the refrigerator.

“I’ve got some sausage and bread and eggs missing, too,” she said.

Los Angeles Police Capt. Donald Floyd said detectives will investigate the alleged theft, starting with interviews of previous tenants.

Steve Getzug, a spokesman for Pacific Bell, confirmed that Williams reported her complaints to the phone company Sept. 22. But for now, he said, the dispute is between Williams and her long-distance providers.

“Typically, if it’s a first-time offense, the long-distance carrier will eliminate those calls,” Getzug said. “When it’s warranted, Pacific Bell will get involved as an advocate if the customer doesn’t get any satisfaction.”

Williams has since canceled her long-distance service, changed her locks and is having second thoughts about her new apartment.

“What I’m thinking about,” she said, “is moving.”