Infamous America - Introducing "Operator" from Wondery and Topic Studios

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

During the 1-900 number craze of the Nineties, one company provided the vast majority of phone sex. American Telnet was an empire founded by the man who called himself “The Telephone Pimp.” He ran the company “like General Motors” and got filthy rich doing it. But for the (mostly) women who answered the calls and delivered fantasies 24-7, it was a different story. The powerful stigma against sex work was always lurking just beneath the surface, until it threatened to tear apart the whole company. Hosted by Tina Horn (Why Are People Into That?), OPERATOR is an eight-part series about big ambitions, Shakespearean-level corporate backstabbing, men and women at the cutting edge of a technological revolution...and on the front lines of a sexual one. Listen to Operator now! http://wondery.fm/OP_Infamous_America  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, we've got a wild one here from Wondry and Topic Studios. It's called Operator, and it's the untold true story of the phone sex line company that took over the world. In the 1990s, ads for phone sex lines were everywhere, from late night cable TV commercials to the backs of magazines, while phone sex operators worked around the clock to fulfill fantasies. It started with an idea from Mike Pardez, the CEO and founder of American Telnet, who proudly called himself the telephone pimp. He was joined by his partner Michael Self, who was a tech genius known as the Bill Gates of Phone Sex. But it was the women on the phones who created the close-knit yet dysfunctional family

that turned American Telnet into the multi-billion dollar company that revolutionized the sex industry. As fortunes grew, the founders threw wild drug parties. on lavish yachts and burned through cash, and the FCC watched their every move. Wondery and Topic Studios' new podcast Operator is the untold true story of a company that dominated the phone sex industry until it was blinded by money and came crashing down.

I'm going to play you a short preview of Operator and introduce you to The Heart, Victoria. And while you're listening, make sure to follow Operator on Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music, Or you can listen early and ad free by subscribing to Wondry Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. I got a call about 2 o'clock in a morning from one of the male supervisors, and he says, there are a bunch of men with guns on the property, and we don't know what to do.

Victoria had been working in American Telnet for several years. She'd seen her share of emergencies, so she didn't freak out right away. And I said, okay, are they police? He says, I really don't know. They're plain clothes. I said plain clothes suits or... He goes, no, jeans. He goes, they said they were placed,

but they refused to show a badge. Victoria's job was managing a big team of phone operators, all crammed into a nondescript warehouse in North Miami Beach. Hundreds of men and women, mostly women, sat in cubicles, headsets on, fielding call after call, day and night. And now men with guns, claiming to be the police

were trying to get into the warehouse. We had electronic door access codes. Every agent, every operator, had their own code. The men didn't have access, and they weren't showing a search warrant. Without a warrant, the operators weren't letting them in. After a while, they stopped knocking.

But when an operator opened the door to leave... The middle-aged agent was at the door, and once she got the door open, they pushed her on the ground, and the team ran over her. her back. The men had been waiting in the bushes. And they fanned out, and they were looking, they were looking in files, they were looking for something. And as quick as they were in, they swooped through, they dug around, and they ran out.

Victoria was furious. As a supervisor at ATN, she had seen plenty of surprising things. And sure, the company may have skirted right up against a few federal regulations, but the service it provided wasn't against the law, because the company where Victoria worked, American Telmet, a company with the blandest of names, was actually the largest phone sex operation in the United States. Love to party? I'll take by cell now. What turns women on will turn you on? No rejections. No turn downs. For men only. The morning after the raid, Victoria wanted answers. She went to ATN's of technology, Michael's self. Not much happened at ATN without Michael's self knowing about it. As it turned out, it was the local police and whatever they were looking for, they'd left

empty-handed. You know, the first story was when we called City Hall, called the cop shop the next morning, they said it never happened. Armed men had invaded their offices, physically assaulting one of their employees, and the police were saying it never happened. And the ATN executives didn't seem to care because the police hadn't found anything. But Victoria cared. What about the operators? They are me by extension. And I do feel that way.

When something like the police raid happened and the owners did nothing, Victoria had to wonder, how much did the company really care about her and the workers she looked out for? My understanding is when those folks flex, things get done. And yeah, they could have done that. People like to mention how busy they were.

Yeah, me too. I wish they would have taken it one step further and protected the golden goose instead of just the gold. Because at the end of the day, ATN was a business, a really big business. It was a wild time. And there's these girls on the stage doing a live sex show. It was like, you know, ecstasy, cocaine, champagne, millionaires. At the pinnacle, we were doing $1.1.2 million on a Friday night or a Saturday night. This man, Mike Partis, he controls all of the phone sex in the country. Fancy cars, fancy clothes, celebrities, models, the porn industry. Until it all came crashing down.

That wasn't a company. It wasn't a job. It was American tellment. The ending sucked. The beginnings were much more fun. Thanks for listening to a preview of Operator. Make sure to follow Operator on Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music, or you can listen early and ad free. by subscribing to Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app.