by Derek Neary
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 01/98) - Two men who figured out a glitch in the North's long-distance phone system have been given two-year suspended sentences and ordered to repay NorthwesTel.

Mohamud Hagi-Salim Hassan, 28, owes the telephone company $33,569.86. Hussen Mohamud Alasow, 34, is responsible for $24,843.54. Both were charged with theft of telecommunications as a result of their actions in 1996 and 1997.

The men, both residing in Yellowknife at the time, had devised a system allowing them to bypass the billing system while making long-distance calls with a combination of these features: three-way calling, toll denial and calling cards. They would link up to two other callers and kept "scoresheets" on which the telephone numbers and the length of the calls were kept.

During an RCMP phone-tapping investigation in January 1997, Hassan made up to 150 calls per day and spent as long as eight hours per day on the phone.

It is suspected that Alasow had been making the toll-free, long-distance calls up to three months before the investigation and Hassan up to a month.

Both men received their phone bills after the investigation and arrests. Hassan's lawyer, James Brydon, said his client was awaiting a bill and testified that he had intentions of paying it.

But Chrumka said there was no evidence that Hassan was going to reimburse NorthwesTel. Being a cab driver with modest savings, "he was not a man of great means," Chrumka suggested, and he certainly wasn't in a position to pay such a costly bill.

Last year, NorthwesTel estimated that the entire phone fraud operation, involving at least 12 people acting as operators, cost them an estimated $10 million to $11 million in lost revenues. Alasow and Hassan were the first two involved in the investigation to be tried.