2: Small Scale Sin
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Okay, three boys, age 13, 15, and 16. All three chose to appear with fake names on this radio program. And the fake names they chose? You ready? K-rad, Mr. Where-Ez, and Fred. Those first two names come from the world of computer hacking and software piracy. Mr. Where-Ez, for example, that's Where-Ez, as-in, Where-Ez, as-in, Software-Ez, as-in, pirated, Software-Ez, illegal Software-Ez. And as for Fred, why Fred? For no reason then. There's got to be someone else named Fred out there. You see anonymity was important given the kinds of things that we were discussing. Namely, credit card fraud, computer hacking, and the nature of hell. Welcome W-B-E-Z in Chicago, this is Your Radio Playhouse, I'm Ira Glass. Today on our Playhouse Stage, Small Scale Stories of Small Scale Sin, stay with us, won't you? So K-rad, Mr. Where-Ez, and Fred were trying to be criminals. But they were not too successful at this. And at a McDonald's, on Times Square, in New York City, they told-ahh. There's none of a nice kind of hard copy sound to it, they told-ahh. This was kind of an unpleasant McDonald's, because it was in Times Square they decided to have neon lights everywhere in this place, a crush of sweaty people at the counter, tourists, most of us, it was the middle of summer. Fred took charge. What do you guys want? Um, I want our number one meal. Okay, I'll pay for this, you're paying for my cab, okay? Whatever I can pay for it. Okay, we'll have a number one meal. They're actually in Manhattan for a computer hackers convention this summer, and Fred was not used to the downtown prices. Oh my God, that's five bucks, man. Uh, you guys are chipping in, I can't pay for this. I think it's fair to say that one sign that your criminal career is not going so well as if you have to worry about the prices at McDonald's. But K-rad, Mr. Where-Ez, and Fred were involved in very low level types of crimes. All of them involved computers, they pirated software, they scammed free CD-ROM games. They cheated one of the big online computer services out of a few hundred dollars in online time. Oh no, they didn't steal very much, and they didn't steal very effective right. But they did try to steal. Take this phone scam where they would call people at random and try to get a calling card number or a credit card number out of them. Basically, the way it works is that you call up somebody, you say this is the AT&T operator, I have a priority collect call for someone's those name. And you have the whole point is you have to sound like you're not calling somebody up with the intention of getting them. You have to sound like you've been sitting in this chair for 10 hours and you want to go home. So you've got to go.
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