Business Notes Boondoggles

Police Detective Steve Moger was the first to notice that something strange was going on in Hackensack, N.J. Starting in February, hundreds of people were lining up at pay-phone booths all over town, chatting for hours at a time. A two-week investigation by local police and New Jersey Bell uncovered the cause of that loquaciousness: a computer glitch that allowed 400 pay phones in the Hackensack area to be used for worldwide conversations without costing the caller a cent. After bugging selected phones, the authorities realized that almost half the international calls placed in an eight-week period bypassed the operator and went directly overseas. Most people, it seems, were dialing friends and family in Korea, India and Israel.

A crackdown soon followed, and among those who felt the law's pinch were an Israeli vice consul based in New York City, Hanan Moked, 43, and his wife Ilana, 40. The couple was arrested after making a series of calls between Hackensack and Israel. Making such a call from a malfunctioning phone is considered to be a deliberate defrauding of the phone company. Moked is charged with theft of services, punishable by up to six months in jail or a $1,000 fine. Are officials at the Israeli consulate embarrassed by the episode? "To say the least," says Consul General Moshe Yegar.