Kansas City, Mo — A former Kansas City telephone executive has been charged with using public telephone contracts in a $3.9 million, multistate fraud.
A 33-count federal indictment issued Friday names Troy P. Campbell, Sr., the former president of North American Communications Group.
The charges stem from a 3 1/2-year probe of telephone contracts that the firm held in Ohio, Tennessee, and Missouri. In Kansas City, Mo., the company once provided pay phone service at the Jackson County Jail and Kansas City International Airport.
Campbell's lawyer, J.R. Hobbs, said Campbell would voluntarily appear in court next week to enter an innocent plea.
In 1998, Campbell told The Kansas City Star that the problems that led to the federal investigation were uncollectible bad debt, inmates making fraudulent calls and a complex billing system.
"There was no intent for me to cheat anybody," he said in that interview.
Campbell and his company are accused of charging individual customers for collect calls they never made or for calls that were longer than calls actually placed.
The indictment alleges that the scheme defrauded a San Antonio, Tex., billing firm, and that it provided false commission reports to county governments, such as Jackson County, Mo., and Shelby County, Tenn.
The indictment estimated the company generated $3.9 million in false telephone charges between May 1996 and July 1997, including $1.2 million from pay telephones at Kansas City International Airport and $56,159 from the Jackson County Jail.
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