Omario Kris Henley Carlyle, 33, was charged with burglary and two counts of battery after kicking in the door of two Florida Comcast customers and attacking them.

At the recent Public Service Commission hearing held in Buffalo, I promised the commissioners a comparison of the type of service Comcast customers have gotten in the past vs. what Time Warner Cable customers have received. Neither company is a prize by any means, but at least with Time Warner Cable, your chances of surviving a service call unscathed are far better than being robbed, raped, or murdered by one of Comcast’s sketchy sub-contractors.

There are too many examples to bring to light in just one article so we’re launching a regular series of reports, illustrating these are not isolated problems and are unlikely to go away anytime soon.

In today’s edition, Comcast’s image isn’t helped hiring a homeless man who defecated in a customer’s yard, Comcast sub-contractor rapists run amuck, and why you should never leave a Comcast worker alone in your home:

The Chicagoist: “When he cut my throat I thought I was going to be dead,” said Natasha Saine. Saine was attacked in 1996 in Little Rock, Arkansas by Ceotis Franks, an independent contractor paid by Comcast to install their cable service. Franks also, “…raped her, threw her in a bathtub and tried electrocuting her. He even set her bedroom on fire.”

Boston Globe: Braintree Town Council reprimanded Comcast this week after one (homeless) worker for a subcontractor it hired to hand out flyers door-to-door allegedly defecated in a resident’s yard, and two others were arrested by police on outstanding warrants.

XFINITY Wi-Fi may be here, but good customer service sure isn’t as these Walden residents wait in line over an hour for assistance.

Gloucester Times: A cable television salesman and installer admitted yesterday to swiping jewelry from two apartments in a Route 1 complex where he was working last month. But Brian Kuschner, 37, of Manchester, N.H., is only serving time for one of those thefts, after making an unusual deal with Danvers police. Kuschner was part of a crew of workers hired by a subcontractor for Comcast selling cable packages and upgrading cable service at the upscale Endicott Green Apartments on Route 1 on the evening of Nov. 23 when he was sent to apartment 1303. The resident told police that when she went into the bedroom after Kuschner left she realized that a Rolex watch was missing from a dresser. She immediately called police, who rounded up all the Comcast workers at the complex’s clubhouse.

TCPalm: Comcast cable installer accused of attacking customers in their home in Indian River County – A cable service contractor kicked in the door of a home and attacked two customers at their home Saturday, according to an Indian River County Sheriff’s Office affidavit.

J.R. Roberts Security Strategies/Sacramento Bee: A former cable television installer with a history of sex crimes was sentenced to 37 years in prison Friday for raping a developmentally disabled Carmichael, California woman while working in her neighborhood. Judge Michael T. Garcia sentenced Luis Jeovanny Saravia, 31, in Sacramento Superior Court, closing the criminal prosecution for the 20-year-old woman and her family. Luis Saravia had worked for Links Communication, a Sacramento-based firm contracted by Comcast.

Semmes, Attorneys At Law: How Comcast legally washes its hands of any responsibility for the conduct of their subcontractor installers.

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In this lighter moment, Comcast kept these customers in Malden, Mass. waiting more than one hour at their customer service center with just one employee barely interacting with customers while the other three service windows remained closed and the line stretched out the door. Finally, someone offering worse service than the DMV! (1:44)

Klobuchar

After months of fruitless discussions with cell phone carriers, the U.S. Senate is moving closer towards legislation that would stop phone companies from blocking “kill switch” technology that could disable lost or stolen phones, discouraging would-be thieves.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) sent letters this week to Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile asking the carriers to do more to protect customers from phone theft.

Klobuchar is concerned wireless companies may be blocking cell phone manufacturers from enabling anti-theft technology customers could activate to disable missing phones and prevent unauthorized access or reactivation without the customer’s consent.

“Mobile devices aren’t just telephones anymore – increasingly people’s livelihoods depend on them,” Klobuchar said. “That’s why we need to do more to crack down on criminals who are stealing and reselling these devices, costing consumers billions every year. The wireless industry needs to step up to the plate and address these thefts, and make sure consumers have the most advanced security technology at their fingertips.”

The technology is already widely available internationally and has dramatically reduced smartphone theft by eliminating most of the resale value of the expensive devices, which are rendered useless once the phone is disabled.

Apple has contractual control over its products unlike most cell phone manufacturers.

But American carriers have so far refused permission to allow manufacturers like Samsung to introduce the feature in North America. Apple has successfully introduced a “kill switch” on many of its latest devices thanks to favorable contractual language that limits outside interference with the software Apple develops for its wireless devices. Other manufacturers are generally required to bow to carrier demands.

“I think that this is motivated by profit,” San Francisco district attorney George Gascon told CNN. Gascon reported he had seen e-mails from carriers that rebuffed Samsung’s efforts to introduce the technology in the American market.

Companies like AT&T claim that a “kill switch” feature could be exploited by hackers and make restoring service extremely difficult. But manufacturers and proponents of kill switch technology dismiss that argument, claiming the process is easily reversible once a customer enters a correct name and password. Critics believe carriers are motivated by the potential loss of millions from the sale of insurance plans, replacement phones, and the increased revenue earned from the reactivation of stolen phones.

With more than 1.6 million smartphones stolen or lost annually, carriers sell more than $800 million of replacement phones worth at least $500 each. Wireless phone companies also profit selling insurance plans priced at $7 or more monthly that offer free or discounted, typically refurbished cell phone replacements. Most customers never use the insurance plans, earning providers an extra $84 a year in revenue per customer.

Without kill switch technology and other theft prevention measures, the incentive to steal valuable smartphones continues to increase. As the price of sophisticated smartphones continues to increase, they are a prime target in street crime incidents. In San Francisco, 67% of robberies are related to mobile devices, according to the police department. Ten percent of phone owners have had a phone stolen, according to a Harris poll.

For now, the industry has only agreed to develop a voluntary database of phones reported lost or stolen. But participating carriers are largely American, allowing crooks to bypass the list by exporting phones overseas where they are quickly reactivated.

Klobuchar wants carriers to go on the record about kill switch technology, and her letter requested a formal response to three questions:

• Whether companies received offers from handset manufacturers to install “kill switch” technology;
• Have companies introduced the technology and, if not, why not;
• How companies will introduce such technology in the future.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CNN Kill Switch Smartphones 11-20-13.flv[/flv]

CNN reports American cell phone companies aren’t interested in allowing customers to remotely disable their lost or stolen cell phones. (0:43)

AT&T supervisors ordered operators to aid Nigerian fraudsters making free calls that cost millions in credit card fraud and the life savings of some victims, while AT&T collected more than $16 million in reimbursements paid by telephone ratepayers across the country.

Last week, AT&T admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay a $3.5 million settlement to the operator the company fired after complaining about widespread fraudulent use of a service intended to help the hearing and speech impaired.

The story is now the subject of a movie script, reports The New Castle News. It begins in 2003, when AT&T was required by the Americans with Disabilities Act to provide operators willing to relay conversations from hearing or speech impaired individuals typing on a computer or device and the people they called.

AT&T employed at least 150 operators at a western Pennsylvania call center in a former shopping mall just to assist with international relay calls. One of them was Constance Lyttle.

AT&T’s international relay service offered those overseas the opportunity to make a free, untraceable relay phone call to any number in the United States. AT&T billed the FCC-administered fund $1.30 a minute for calls placed through the relay operator.

The service quickly became popular… with Nigerian scammers who used it to make free calls to American businesses. In fact, according to a lawsuit filed in 2010, around 95 percent of all calls placed through AT&T’s international relay service came from con artists peddling various scams and ordering merchandise with stolen credit cards from unsuspecting businesses.

The Nigerians used hard-to-track public Internet terminals to initiate calls through AT&T’s relay center. An AT&T operator would read the words typed by the con artist over the phone to the person called and type back any responses.

Lyttle testified the usual target for the scam was a unknowing small business willing to accept credit card orders from Nigeria or an individual willing to advance their life savings in return for promised larger payout unlocked by their deposit. It was all made possible with the help of AT&T, which earned several dollars for every successfully completed call.

Lyttle said the operators in the call center immediately understood what was going on and complained repeatedly about the abuse of the system. In response, AT&T “made workers sign agreements that they would put through the scam and fraudulent calls, and they actually used those words,” said Lyttle’s attorney, who also happens to be her sister. “The workers at the call center were afraid they would lose their jobs. AT&T paid very well and good-paying jobs are hard to come by in western Pennsylvania.”

Nigerians exploited the AT&T Relay service call center located at this former mall in New Castle, Penn.

The lawsuit against AT&T alleged the phone company had full knowledge of what was going on but didn’t want to lose a lucrative contract that resulted in at least $16 million in reimbursements.

“They were getting $1.30 per minute for these calls,” said Lyttle’s attorney. “Think about the volume of calls that were being made.”

Lyttle’s attorney said Constance would sabotage some calls to stop the fraud, falsely claiming the party at the other end had hung up. Her 2010 lawsuit alleged her effort to protect the public from Nigerian scam artists was the reason she was fired in 2010 after 13 years with AT&T.

Her lawsuit soon attracted the interest of the U.S. Department of Justice. In March 2012, the federal agency joined the case. Lyttle was designated a “whistleblower” and her involvement in the federal lawsuit was initially kept secret. Earlier this year AT&T agreed to reimburse the Federal Communications Commission more than $18 million for abandoning their responsibility to block the overseas scammers not qualified to use the relay service. AT&T also admitted a percentage of callers did use the service for illicit purposes.

Lyttle herself received a settlement proposal of $3.5 million in her whistleblower case. AT&T also offered her old job back but she turned them down, saying she preferred her current part-time job over returning to AT&T.

It’s just as well. The New Castle, Penn. call center at the epicenter of more than $20 million in reimbursements and settlements was ordered closed by an unnamed AT&T executive in November.

“I was told 125 employees would lose their jobs in the next 12 to 15 months,” said New Castle Mayor Anthony Mastrangelo. “I don’t know if the local people will lose their jobs or have the option to be transferred.”

Despite dozens of new state laws and an effort by lawmakers to make metal theft a federal crime carrying a 10-year prison sentence, the epidemic of copper cable theft is expected to get worse before it gets better. The reason? China’s insatiable demand for North America’s enormous supply of discarded and stolen wire.

“The FBI has indicated that there’s so much theft taking place that it’s causing a national infrastructure issue,” said Lt. Terry Alling, a law enforcement official who now consults with police departments on how to recognize and curtail valuable metal thefts.

Scrap copper used to end up in the trash, especially telephone and coaxial cable used by phone and cable companies. With bare, high quality copper wiring valued at only $0.50 a pound for years, many scrap dealers were uninterested in shielded telecom cables that were a costly nuisance to process for recycling.

That changed in late 2003 when copper prices began a dramatic rise, first doubling to $1 a pound by 2004 and then suddenly spiking to an eye-popping $4 by 2006. Only the arrival of the Great Recession in 2008 would temporarily stem demand, dropping prices below $1.50 a pound. Two years later, prices dramatically rebounded, reaching an all time high of $4.50 a pound, and have remained above $3 ever since.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KOMO Seattle Copper Theft Epidemic 5-6-13.mp4[/flv]

KOMO in Seattle went undercover to sell scrap copper and quickly discovered why copper wire theft is now an epidemic — scrap dealers are ignoring the law and buying suspect copper with no questions asked. (5 minutes)

As prices have increased, so have copper thefts. Starting about a decade ago, law enforcement personnel discovered they were responding to a growing wave of reports of stolen manhole covers, copper pipe taken from abandoned buildings or construction sites, copper air conditioner coils gone missing, and even statues and other art work ripped out of the ground.

Outside of the risk of falling into a manhole missing its cover, the biggest threat to public safety has come from utility infrastructure theft. Brazen thieves have shown their interest in turning scrap metal into cash has taken a priority over their personal safety and yours. Amazed utility workers were shocked to find thieves even willing to steal infrastructure from live power substations, often leaving customers in the dark as a result. A less risky, but just as profitable strategy has come from harvesting telephone cable right off of telephone poles, knocking out service for hundreds or thousands of customers as a result.

Some of the worst problems for telecom companies are in rural areas and smaller cities where thieves can remove cable with a good chance of not being seen.

In the Pacific Northwest, Spokane experienced cable theft from area substations. In Olympia, $30,000 of electric cable was stripped from street lights.

Three soccer fields in Federal Way experienced repeated copper theft, resulting in $150,000 in damages, despite efforts by the Federal Way Soccer Association to discourage thieves.

“We’ve changed the locks in all the systems, we’ve gone to gluing down doors on the boxes — nothing is stopping them,” said George Fifer.

Frontier Communications customers in Washington have been among the hardest hit. Last year, Frontier reported 10 major outages as a result of copper wire theft in the state. Frontier’s problems are nearly as bad in Ohio and West Virginia, those states being hit the most often. This year is more of the same in Washington, with at least 2,000 Frontier customers knocked out of service since April.

Frontier Communications has reported lines being stolen in Snohomish, Skykomish and Granite Falls, causing temporary outages for customers throughout north King and Snohomish counties.

[flv width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KCPQ Seattle Thieves ripping out bulk phone lines 7-25-13.flv[/flv]

In July, KCPQ in Seattle reported copper thieves struck again, wiping out phone service in parts of Snohomish County, Wash. Nearly 2,000 Seattle-area customers have been hit so far. (3 minutes)

“Customers are taken out of service, they’re put at risk, they can’t call 911,” said Frontier Communications general Manager Ken Baldwin. “The emergency folks can’t run the trace and know where they need to be.”

Alling estimates at least 90 percent of the copper theft is committed by meth addicts, motivated by their habit and unafraid to take risks.

They rely on selling their stolen copper to a network of scrap dealers that pay consumers and construction firms for “recovered/unwanted metals.” Although many scrap dealers operate legitimate businesses and don’t want to deal in stolen copper, there are more than a few willing to look the other way. Those dealers typically pay quick cash at below market prices to people who cannot credibly explain where the weekly bales of phone cable are coming from, so they don’t ask.

There is usually little risk to the dealers, who are unlikely to leave stolen copper in the storage yard for very long.

Alling says the copper crime wave is being fed by insatiable demand from the booming economy of China.

“They’re buying all the copper that they can get their hands on,” Alling said. “It’s speculated that they’re stockpiling and there’s not going to be any slowdown whatsoever for an extended period. The price is going to stay up which means that theft is going to stay up as well.”

A forthcoming book excerpted by Bloomberg Business Week seems to confirm Alling’s experience.

“Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade,” published in November by Bloomsbury Publishing, digs deep into the world of scrap metal and the Asian metal market that increasingly drives most of the demand.

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Washington’s Most Wanted reports wire theft is becoming an epidemic in the Pacific Northwest, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and risking public safety. Now local law enforcement is learning how to fight back. (3 minutes)

China alone accounted for 43.1 percent of all global copper demand in 2012, writes Adam Minter, more than five times the amount of copper acquired by the U.S. that same year. For at least a decade, China has imported 70 percent of the scrap copper it uses to power its enormous manufacturing and construction industries. China’s most attractive source for recycled copper? The United States.

Minter writes at least 100 roving Chinese scrap dealers are traveling across the country in rental cars from scrap yard to scrap yard. They come ready to buy… a lot. Some scrap dealers receive visitors from China almost daily. Minter notes many of those 100 will spend an average of $1 million a week on discarded (or stolen) copper, much of it considered “low-grade” by American dealers because it requires cumbersome and expensive processing before it can be melted down or reused in new ways.

That is no problem for scrap dealers like Johnson Zeng, employed by a scrap importer in China’s Guangdong Province.

As Zeng browses one scrap yard in St. Louis, his interest piques when he sees bales and boxes of power lines and what the scrap trade calls “jelly.”

This is where Frontier Communications and other phone companies come in.

Much of the stolen telephone cable sold for scrap contains hundreds, if not thousands of individual copper wires, each wrapped in insulation and in turn wrapped around a thick black sheath to keep the weather out. This is the cable one might find serving entire neighborhoods or business blocks with landline phone service and DSL. If you cut into that cable, often 2″ in diameter, there is a chance it would begin oozing a Vaseline-like gel — the “jelly” Zeng has an interest in. That goo is primarily designed to keep underground phone cables dry because it helps repel corrosion-causing moisture.

A minimum order for a Chinese exporter typically needs to fill at least one shipping container of this size.

Minter notes American recyclers hate jelly cable because it clogs their processing equipment. In China, it is in high demand because it is cheaply obtained and can be processed by an army of workers that cut the cable apart and wash away the petroleum product by hand.

Without the demand for “low-grade” copper wiring such as telephone cables coming from abroad, thieves would be unlikely to find any interest for their ill-gotten gains.

Cable companies have it easier. Asian exporters have shown little interest in coaxial cable because the effort to free the copper center conductor from the thick plastic sheath and wire netting that surrounds it is, for now, not worth it.

The demand on scrap dealers to maintain sufficient inventory to keep the roving band of exporters coming back is intense. Most Chinese buyers need a minimum order of one shipping container holding at least 40,000 pounds to make the deal worthwhile. Those containers are the size of a load driven by an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer.

At just one scrap yard, Zeng offered to buy all 10,000 pounds of “jelly” phone cable — all the dealer had in stock that day —  5,000 pounds of “grease wire,” and a large quantity of discarded Christmas tree light strings — another popular target for Asian exporters looking for cheap low-grade wire.

Within hours, Zeng would be back inside his rental car traveling to the next scrap dealer in a journey that took him from Illinois to South Carolina.

The recycling industry points out that if the Chinese were not in the market for American wire, it would end up in a landfill because copper demand within the United States is too low to justify the processing and labor costs to recycle it.

But that demand also fuels the growing copper theft plaguing the United States, and that costs every American taxpayer.

“The Department of Energy estimates that for every $100 that a copper thief actually gets in stolen materials, it costs $5,000 in repairs,” Alling said.

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KXLY in Spokane reports miles of live power cables have been stolen by copper thieves. It takes a small amount of copper wire to make a lot of money, encouraging thieves to take more risks for bigger payoffs. Now a new Washington state law includes a “no-buy” list that keeps repeat offenders from selling to dealers in adjacent counties.  (3 minutes)

Alling blames the meth addicts who commit the crimes, but also fingers scrap metal dealers who buy without asking questions. The source of stolen copper varies in different parts of the country. While telecommunications lines are most affected in rural communities, copper pipes and air conditioning coils are favorite targets in urban areas.

Most states have enacted new laws to curb the trade in stolen copper. Many require dealers to demand ID from sellers and keep detailed purchase records allowing law enforcement to identify the source of stolen cable found at scrap yards. Others require a license to sell copper to recyclers, a limit on the amount of scrap that can be sold to a dealer, and provisions for stiff fines and jail time for those caught buying or selling stolen metal.

In some states like West Virginia, tougher copper theft laws are beginning to curb thieves, but in South Carolina the thefts continue, despite the fact the state requires sellers of copper to first obtain a permit from a local sheriff’s office before selling their metal.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a state copper theft control measure in New Jersey last week, claiming it would impose “overly burdensome regulations” on the state’s scrap dealers. The bill would have required that all payments for scrap metal be made by non-transferrable check unless the seller has a photo ID on file with the scrap company, and that businesses could only accept deliveries made by motor vehicle, allowing firms to record the buyer’s plates and driver’s license.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), are tackling copper theft on the federal level by co-sponsoring the Metal Theft Prevention Act – a proposal to make stolen metal a federal crime.

Klobuchar

S. 394 and its House companion bill H.R. 867 would impose a 10-year prison sentence on anyone caught stealing metal from telephone or cell towers, highway equipment or other critical infrastructure. The bill would also make it tougher to fence stolen metal by requiring more record-keeping for recycling agents, and prohibiting them from paying cash for purchases larger than $100.

Klobuchar claims copper theft has shot up by 80 percent in recent years and she wants to put a dent in it.

“The recent rise in incidents of metal theft across the country underscores the importance of federal action to crack down on metal thieves, put them behind bars and make it more difficult for them to sell their stolen goods,” Klobuchar said.

Despite some bipartisan support, Govtrack.us estimates the measure has only a 7% chance of getting past committee and a 3% chance of being passed in the House of Representatives, noting the Republican-controlled body voted only 11% of bills out of committee and only about 3% were enacted over the last two years. The companion bill in the U.S. Senate has already passed a committee vote, so Govtrack estimates it has a 40% chance of passing a full Senate vote, assuming it is not filibustered.

The federal measure is getting significant opposition from Republicans who argue it violates states’ rights to manage the problem through legislation on the state level.

“I have heard concerns expressed regarding people stealing valuable metal and crossing state lines to sell the stolen product,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).  While I would support federal legislation addressed to such truly interstate circumstances, legislation that more broadly regulates intrastate conduct is constitutionally problematic. In my view, this bill exceeds Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause and imposes a federal regulatory scheme in an area of law the Constitution reserves to the states. In the interest of maintaining the balance between state and federal authority, I will vote against reporting this bill from the Judiciary Committee.”

Alling says in some communities copper thieves have gotten organized into gangs targeting valuable infrastructure, so while legislators work the problem on their end, local police need to organize themselves to combat it.

Alling said police should be on the lookout for thieves with tools like headlamps, bolt cutters and a change of clothes. Police should also search the area where the copper was stolen because often, the bad guys stash the metal nearby until they can remove it without getting caught.

Individuals can also report suspicious activity themselves by calling 911. In some areas, reward funds have been established by utilities for tips that lead to the successful prosecution of metal thieves.

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KOMO in Seattle reports Frontier Communications has been plagued with copper cable thefts for the last two years, cutting off critical 911 services to affected residents. (2 minutes)

Comcast unnecessarily worried suburban Philadelphia customers about a “fake Comcast employee” going door to door in Warrington, Pa., that ultimately turned out to be an actual employee of Comcast.

Warrington police issued a media alert warning residents about a suspicious man going door-to-door carrying a clipboard asking to inspect the wiring and company-owned cable modems.

One Deep Path Drive customer reported a visit on a recent Sunday morning by a man with a Comcast ID badge around his neck, driving a pickup with a Comcast sign on it. At the end of the inspection, homeowners were given a questionnaire to be submitted to Michael Birch, a senior director of accounts, that included his phone number and address.

When police called Comcast, they denied anyone was conducting follow-up checks in the area and the man asking to enter customer homes was not a Comcast employee.

But after an extensive investigation (they called the phone number on the questionnaire during regular business hours and followed up with Comcast management), police have now learned that both the mysterious man and Birch were legitimate Comcast employees auditing recent installation and service work done by third party contractors.