US West

On January 19, 1995, Paula J. Alpar, a Claims Representative at US West Communications sent Maydak a letter. The following is the complete text of that letter:

Dear Mr. Maydak:

Generally, whenever there is a discrepancy regarding 900 calls it is our policy to ``Recourse'' the calls back to the carrier. However, when the final bill for (303) 920-3842 was created, U S West Communications did not recourse the 900 calls billed to this number. If the ``recourse'' procedure is not taken, then the only consequence is it would then become U S West's responsibility to investigate and collect for the calls.

I verified this information with a collection supervisor and our records clearly show we did not ``Recourse''.

So, which is it? Did AT&T not know that they had been paid or did they lie at Keith's trial? AT&T claimed that they were recoursed at Maydak's Sentencing Hearing and Maydak was convicted of defrauding AT&T and an order of restitution was made in favor of AT&T. As you can clearly see, AT&T never lost a dime, and in fact made a small fortune.

In addition, Maydak has a copy of a US West telephone bill for one of the remote-call-forwarding lines. This line does not have three way calling or call waiting or any such feature. It can only forward one call at a time.

This bill has five calls to a CSA 900# with the same time index, meaning AT&T alleges that five calls were being made at the same time from one phone number. Perhaps AT&T did a little more than double-billing?

When presented with this bill, US West released Keith Maydak from all liability in exchange for immunity from suit. They also provided documents showing that they paid AT&T for the calls in question.

We certainly do not blame US West. They received electronic billing information from AT&T and paid them. They then passed the information on believing it was correct. AT&T ripped them off.