Still TPC

 

Anyone remember the antagonist – bad guy – in the movie “The President’s Analyst?” Does anyone at least remember the movie? It starred James Coburn as a secret agent who proved TPC was responsible for trying to take over the world. James Coburn, you know, the switchblade throwing cowboy in the Magnificent Seven? Well, this isn’t going as I planned.

If your memory is in the cloud and the Internet is down, TPC was going to implant Cerebrum Communicators in everybody’s brain and, well, I’m sure you know where that led. The plot is easily found on Wikipedia and other Internet sources, so if you plan on writing your Master’s Thesis on conspiracy theories, make sure you cite your sources accurately. You may have recalled by now TPC stood for The Phone Company.

TPC was the same group who sent an unmarked car with two of its people to my next door neighbor on SW 36^th Street in Miami one evening in 1958. Jim C. was caught cheating TPC because he had surreptitiously installed a second telephone in his bedroom but hadn’t declared it to the TPC. If you don’t remember James Coburn, you definitely don’t remember when you paid a fee for every telephone in your house. A second extension cost extra, and TPC monitored ring current to every telephone number to make sure no one cheated. Any anomaly in the current required to ring your bell warranted a visit from the people in the unmarked car. Jim agreed to pay the “fee” for usage going back several months and we heard no more about it.

Skip ahead to what I did a just few moments ago, some sixty years later, when I blocked yet another scam telephone call. I know it was a scam because the call was from my own phone and I have it in my hand and as forgetful as I am at times, I know I didn’t just call me.

Are these calls being paid for? I seriously doubt anyone can defraud TPC by skirting or spoofing outbound calls. Are honest businesses being scammed into thinking these fraudulent, million dollar charges are really incurred by them? Somebody is paying big time for carrier access.

Do you think scammers are escaping the revenue sweep of TPC? I doubt it. It looks to me like TPC has found a way to make lemonade out of just about everything. Where is James Coburn when you need him?

George