809 scam

An 809 scam is a form of phone fraud which exploits the tendency of telephone subscribers in Canada and the United States to presume that a number in the familiar North American Numbering Plan format of 1-NPA-NXX-XXXX is a domestic call at standard rates because of the absence of the 011- international prefix which normally indicates an overseas call.

Points in the former +1-809 area code are not in North America but in the Caribbean, distributed among multiple small island nations. Some former 1-809 points are US possessions (such as Puerto Rico and USVI), but many are sovereign entities. Adding to the confusion, the 809 code was split into multiple new area codes in 1997. A call to these points may be just as expensive as any other overseas call.

Most numbers in these area codes are legit; calls to regular landlines in many of the countries may normally be half a dollar a minute. There is, however, a risk that premium numbers in these area codes will not be properly identified as such; the use of a foreign country allows circumvention of the meagre consumer protections which the US Federal Communications Commission or the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) apply to domestic 1-900 or 976-XXXX schemes.

Phone fraud

Communications fraud is the use of telecommunications products or services without intention to pay.

Many operators have increased measures to minimize fraud and reduce their losses. Communications operators tend to keep their actual loss figures and plans for corrective measures confidential.

According to a 2011 survey by CFCA, an industry group created to reduce fraud against carriers, the five top fraud loss categories reported by operators were:

Types of frauds

Fraud against users by phone companies