Reply All - #167 America's Hottest Talkline

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

This week we're rebroadcasting a recent favorite. Emmanuel investigates a mysterious recording that has been popping up on toll free numbers for major corporations, police departments, and even federal government agencies for years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode is brought to you by the massive bunch of cilantro you just bought at your grocery store. You know you're not going to use it all in a week. Your grocery store really should offer smaller bunches, but at least you're seasoning your food. Good for you. Okay, let's hear some real lads. From Gimlet, this is Reply All. I'm Emmanuel Jogh. So today, we're re-airing a story that we first ran almost two years ago. In fact, when I first started reporting this story in April of 2020, COVID was just starting to hit the US.

And back then, I got a tip from a reporter friend of mine down in Mississippi. She told me about this one really weird event that took place that she just hadn't been able to stop thinking about. So say your full name for me and what you do. I'm Elisa Duhl and I'm a reporter for the Clarion Ledger. It's the newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi. At the time, Elisa was a pretty big investigative reporter. Like, she did stories on political stuff that happened down there, but also did stuff on Mississippi's prisons. But one day, her editor was just kind of like, hey, you know, it's a weekend shift.

There's a couple of like sort of feel-goody news stories buzzing around today. Why don't you just sort of like write one of those fluffy news pieces up? They were looking for some levity during this time. You know, we've been writing about only very serious, sad coronavirus news for, I don't know, like two months now. All the COVID stuff was feeling like a bit of a bummer. And as luck would have it, that day. a story broke on Twitter that was the perfect antidote for the depressing news cycle. What had happened was this. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, nicknamed Mima, like Mississippi's

version of FEMA, and the Mississippi Department of Health, sent out like this big email to all these different regional emergency management directors around the state, just offering information about coronavirus and how they were going to deal with it. And that email pointed to this one toll-free number. People were supposed to call it to get COVID info or get help. But when they called that number. Here's what they got instead. Welcome to America's hottest talk line. Guys, hot ladies are waiting to talk to you. Press one now. Ladies, to talk to interesting and exciting guys free. Press 2 to connect free now. It sounded a lot like a phone sex line, albeit a very heteronormative one. And my friend Elisa,

who was reporting the story, was kind of like, okay, this is weird. And so, of course, he does her job, contacts the state of Mississippi to be like, what is this? Why did this happen? How did this happen? And Mima, the Mississippi Department of Emergency Management, they get back and are just like, hey, so sorry, it was like a God honest mistake. But they didn't say what the mistake had been. Had they given a number that was one digit off? Nobody knew. The department just said that like the email was quote incorrect and that they directed callers to an inappropriate phone number. and that was kind of all their offering. End of story.

But that wasn't enough for Elisa. She Googled America's Hotter's Talkline. Just to see if her could find, like, the company that was behind it, basically. Uh-huh. But instead of finding a company website, I just found, like, dozens and dozens of news stories from all over the country of other agencies or businesses making the same. exact mistake. Again and again, all of these organizations were sending out phone numbers that

were sending people to America's hottest talk line. So, you know, I found an article about how after Hurricane Irma, FEMA put out a flyer for people that were looking for help after the hurricane, and when they called a number, it led to America's hottest talk line. In Maine, a couple years ago, the State of Maine's Department of Health and Human Services released like a new EBT card for like food stamps and stuff. And you know how like on the back of a credit card or something like that there'll be a toll-free number you can call? Well, there was such a number on the back of this EBT card and if you called that number,

you'd get America's hottest talkline. This was a different number than the one in Mississippi. In fact, whenever America's hottest talk line popped up, it did so on different numbers. There were headlines that said numbers for the Yankees, the Baltimore Police, Marvel, like all at one point had led to America's Hotless Talk Line. This phone sex line, it seemed like the sort of parasite that had latched onto all of these different parts of the world that had no relation to each other at all. And it was having big consequences. There was a sheriff's office down in Florida that promoted a hotline directing victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault to a service run by a non-profit, and it actually led people to America's Hotest Office. talk line.

Lisa kept looking into all of this, and she came across a video from when another reporter had to call the Mississippi number and got on America's Hotline. And in the video, there was this one little detail in it that jumped out of her. If you watch the video, it plays this message. Welcome to America's hottest talk line. And then it'll automatically hang up as soon as the message is over. Which felt like a clue to her. For me, like, you would think they would wait or, like, repeat the menu a few times

because they want customers instead of just hanging up on you. Yeah. So I'm not even convinced that this is a real phone sex line. Elisa wondered if, like, this was just a recording and nothing more. So she decided that she was going to call up the number Mississippi sent out and find out for herself. I try to call that number, and it led to some sort of message that said,

like, this is a non-working number in your area. Wow, that's like, that's so bizarre. Yeah, I've tried a couple of more times just to see, like, what is this bizarre glitch in the Matrix doing now? But America's Hotter's Talk Line was gone. When Elisa told me this, it filled me with so many questions. Like, whoever's behind this,

how are they making America's Hotters Talk Lines show up on all of these different phone lines? And if this wasn't actually a working phone sex line, what was the point of it? So I told Elisa that I tried to figure it out. And what I found shook my Catholic vanilla ice cream loving self to the core in a pretty major way, which we'll get to after the break.

Welcome back to the show. So the first thing I did after a Lisa told me about America's Otter's Talk Line was called the number the state of Mississippi sent out. And it wasn't dead anymore. Thank you for calling. Are you or someone in your household 50 years or older? Press one for yes. Two for no. This wasn't America's Lawline.

The number the Mississippi government had given out was now something completely different. Maybe I should just press. All right, I'll press. Thank you for calling the Medical Alert Center. This is Jessica on a recorded line. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, hi, Jessica. I just wanted to say, so my name's Emmanuel.

Great. So with our promotion today, you actually have the opportunity to receive a free medical alert device. So congratulations. You know, it's that little button anywhere around your neck that you press in case of that emergency or even a fall. Now, when you're participating in our monitoring program, you actually can get your medical alert absolutely free. I'd reach the service called medical alert, which from what I could tell was basically just a knockoff of life alert. you know, the help I fall and I can't get up company, which made me even more confused than I was before.

Because, like, how had a COVID hotline been taken over by a phone sex line, only to be taken over, again, by a weird knock-off medical device company? So I tried another phone number from one of the other instances where AmericaSot was talking about it appeared, and I got another recorded message. Thank you for calling the Auto Savings Center. This is Tanya on a recorded line.

You hear me okay? This recording was from a company called Protect My Car, which sounded very similar to the recorded message from medical alert. So the next number I tried, I decided to just wait on the line. See if they give me an option to talk to a real person. Thank you for holding a promotion today. You have been selected to receive a free medical alert. Hi, hi, hey. I'm sorry. Can you hear me?

Yes, I can hear you. I'm calling because I was trying to reach another service. America's Hollis Talk Line. I thought it was by this number, but I guess it's not. All right, all right, sir. Sometimes the phone number changes or the wrong button get pressed, but in the meantime, you have the opportunity to receive a free medical alert system. Yeah, yeah.

I'd reached a real person, but this guy was on a major Always Be Closing Kick. No matter what I asked him, he would just try to sell me stuff. So I just called the numbers over and over and over again, trying to get information. Thank you for holding with that promotion today. You have been delighted to receive a free medical alert system, so congratulations. Thank you. Oh, hi. Sorry, sorry.

I just want to interrupt. My name's Emmanuel Jochi, and I'm a reporter. I'm calling because I'm actually working on a story, and I was trying to get in touch with, like, America's hottest talk line. Are you guys owned by the same company? I'm sure if you hang up and call back, because, you know, sometimes. Fund numbers do change the wrong button gets pressed. Yeah, but that's the thing.

I know I didn't press the wrong number, though. So that's... Mr. Dutson. Joechi, sorry, but that's okay. I know it's a weird name. Dootsie. Jocci. Dootcy. But it's okay, dootsie. Eventually, I got another customer service rep who gave me information that seemed actually helpful.

They told me that there was a directory I could call where I should be able to find America's Hotter's Talk Line. What toll-free listing would you like? America's hottest talk line. I think you said, plan. If that's not correct, press 9. Please repeat to request. America's hardest talk line. I think you said, American concrete. If that's not correct, press 9.

Otherwise, I'll check. I tried calling these lines for several days and didn't get anywhere. I couldn't track down America's hotline. But then I got my first rule breakthrough. When my colleague, Daviano, suggested I talked to a guy he interviewed once named Bruno Tabby, whose job is helping companies get 1-800 numbers. Hello? Hi, Bruno.

Can you hear me? Yeah, I can. So I called him and told him. and told him about America's Otter's Talk Line. Have you ever heard of like this thing, this phenomenon, America's Talk Line? Oh, you have? Bruno hadn't specifically heard of America's Talk Line, but he thought he sounded a lot like the work of the company he knew.

It probably goes by a lot of different names, but this is a company that owns a lot of very well-known phone numbers. Bruno said the company mostly worked in toll three numbers, that this company also seemed to be somehow connected to phone sex. That this company now seem to be dabbling in other businesses as well, all without actually mentioning the name of this company. Finally, I just asked him, what's the name of the company? I guess it doesn't matter because it's public info, but they go by Primetell.

Prime tell. My initial assumption was that whoever was behind America's hot was talk line was some fly-by-night operator, like some nerd, some nerd, way, having way too much fun with phone tech. But Bruno was like, no, no, no, no, you're thinking about this all wrong. If the culprit is Primetell, this is no joke. Like, Primetail does not mess around. I would soon come to think of Primetime as a fortress.

A fortress that I needed to get inside of to understand how America's hottest talk line had taken over so many phone numbers. And I would spend the next four months talking to the people who carried in its shadow, the people who studied it, the people who guarded it, and the people who'd built it. But to start off, here's what Bruno told me about Primtel. Both Bruno and Primetel are in the toll-free number industry, otherwise known as a 1-800 business. 1-800 numbers, especially numbers like 1-800 lawyer, numbers that spell things,

are incredibly valuable for any business to have. And so they pay companies like Bruno's business to go to incredible lengths to get certain numbers for them. Any numbers that are really valuable, they're not just like low-hanging fruit where you just maybe get them. Like, we've bought businesses just because we wanted the phone number. Wow. And yet somehow in this industry where 1-800 numbers are so, so hard to get, Bruno told me that Primetime had a crazy number of them. They're a behemoth.

It owns, I believe the number is about 25% of the 800 numbers. Oh, my God. How much is that? Like, what are we talking? Millions. Millions. Millions of phone numbers. Yeah.

That fact, that Primetail controls millions of toll-free numbers. that's all I could learn from Bruno. So I started to call other people with the toll-free industry, and they told me Primetail is a really secretive company. The nickname they have is the black hole because it's like where things went to disappear.

Like, you don't know what's in the black hole. It's like this mystery, and I think that's just the way they operate. Encounters with this so-called black hole were rare and brief. I met two of the programmers one time at a conference, and they're as tight-lipped as the whole company is. Wow.

You don't get their names, you don't get any information. You're not going to find somebody inside that wants to tell you about it all. This same guy would go on to compare Primetel without irony to Kaiser Sosei. And the little information that people did know, they were super hesitant to tell me. Like, I call this one guy Greg Fernandez

who went on and on about how much you respected the person who ran Primetail. I would just love, like, just a... take her out for a cup of coffee just to see how she ticks. To take who out? Oh, the person behind the conglomerate. Oh, who is that? Who is she, it sounds like.

Yeah, it is a she. And I don't want to, if you don't know, I don't know, Emmanuel. I don't know if I want to out her. I mean. I've been saying very kind things about them. And everything I've said about them is true. They're very powerful people. Wow.

They're very, very, very, very powerful. Like, just, I don't know. I guess I want to, I don't want to, like, am I putting your business at risk by asking you to go on the record about this? It's like that kind of power thing? I don't, yeah, I don't want to, you know, yeah, I don't want to rock the boat. How's that?

Who was this mystery genius woman? And if she was behind America's Sotland, taking over all of these toll three numbers, how exactly was she and her company doing it? I kept having visions of some nondescript office building somewhere, like far from prying eyes, filled of the sort of employees you meet at DC Happy Hours, whose answer to, what do you do, is to vaguely say that they work in consulting, even though you know and they know that there was a lot more to their job, and they have a lot of power over your life. I searched online for any scrap of information about Primetail. They have no website, no Facebook page.

There was one red herring, a company based in Cyprus called Primetail. It was not them. But then, other digging through some legal documents, I realized that my primetail seemed to have a whole network of different aliases and partner companies, all with very generic names like National A1, Mayfair or Zipline. And I began searching for people who worked for those companies. That's how I found a woman I'm going to call Evelyn. Hello.

Hello. Hi. Where am I talking to you? I'm in beautiful Philadelphia, East Falls, neighborhood. And this is my office. Nice. Where the magic does not happen ever. Like Bruno, Evelyn told me she'd never heard of America's Auto's Talk Line specifically. But it sounded like the kind of service Primetell might run.

And Evelyn knows this because she's worked for National A1 and Primetime. in a range of capacities for more than 25 years. In fact, she says she helped create it. Although when she joined, she had no idea what she was getting into. The year was 1992. Eblin was living in Philadelphia, and she just graduated college. I'm working as a librarian making bank, obviously. So I'm looking for shit to do, and I see this ad in the paper, in the city paper,

and it says, I remember Backpage, it was really kind of, anyway, you remember. But so it said, we're needing romantic fantasies. Romantic fantasies? Romantic fantasies. This is just as ad, asking for romantic fantasies. The people who posted the ad needed at least 10 fantasies and were offering to pay 10 bucks for each one, which to Evelyn felt like easy money,

especially since her grand plan was to plagiarize from a book of 1970s romance fantasies. But by the time Evelyn got around to calling the number in the ad with her stolen fantasies, they were no longer looking for people to write them. They were looking for people to read them, which to Evelyn felt like even easier money. So, Evelyn scheduled a time to go in and read at this company's offices.

Only, when she went in for her audition, she realized it wasn't your typical workplace. So describe to me, like, the day you walked in, like, what it looked like and stuff. Oh my gosh. So you pretty much walk in and they have to buzz you in because it's like killer thick glass. This place was like a little door. The window that you see from the street is just cluttered with watches and jewelry and just jump.

Oh, so you went into like a pawn shop? Yes. Were you surprised when you walked up and you're like, oh, this is just like a watch shop? I was fascinated. And it was just. And then here's the funniest part is that there's this old man, like super old man on an elevated stool. I slumped over, like drooling into his chest essentially. Just this sweet, adorable, like, you look like a sunken mushroom of a man just sort of collapsed on himself.

And I walked in and I thought maybe he was the guy I was supposed to talk to because I'm an idiot and he's the first one. So I just sort of walked up staring at him. And then someone's like, yo, yo, and they're talking to me behind me. And I'm where? Who am I talking to? So when I turn around and the next thing I know I'm walking down this dingy stare and I'm in this weird office that's like very low ceilings and there's these pinups and teddy bears everywhere. What? She just liked to know a basement filled with pinups and teddy bears? Yeah.

It was here in the Diamond District of Philadelphia, in the strangely decorated basement of a porn shop called the National Watch Exchange, that is, porn spelled P-A-W-N, but an empire would eventually be born. The owner of National Watch Exchange was a man named Richard Cohen. Years later, he would become the co-owner of Primetell. But back when she met him, Evan said Richard, he was just a guy looking for the next big way

to make money. She said Richard looked like George Farragood, which, according to my favorite editor and resident expert on white guys from the 70s, Tim Howard, means Richard Cohen looks like the dude who sang bad to the bone. I got like wings, like 70s kind of hair, you know? Oh, okay. But his eyes are I always thought that's one thing I always think of him. They're his eyes.

A lot of people will immediately be like, oh, that guy's creepy. What about his eyes seem creepy? Have you ever been into a jewelry store? Like a pawn shop and the guy behind the counter and is like, hey, what he got? Yes. That's kind of Richard.

Richard, says Evelyn, was constantly on the hunt for things of value. He was a collector. And those teddy bears that lie in the basement, those with the crown jewels of his collection. They're his babies. They're his children. He loves his bears.

And these are just like teddy bears. They're stife. What is a stife bear? It's the Rolex of teddy bears, my friend. You look at their expensive. People pay, like, it's ridiculous. They've been making bears in Germany for, like, over 100 years. Oh, my God.

So did he have names for them? Yes. And lives and everything. I didn't realize this at the time. I've learned this since. But yes, it's real. It's hardcore. Like, he loves his bears.

He loves him. In addition to loving his bears, Evan described Richard as a bit of a reckless. You'll never get him to talk to you, she told me. And she was right. Richard didn't respond to my letters, calls, or emails. He didn't talk to me for this story. No one officially representing Primetel did either. Anyways, according to Evelyn, back in the early 90s,

Richard was firmly in his pawn shop business, running it with his brother when he realized there was another way he could make money off the customers who frequented the store. One of the problems with being a person who didn't have a whole lot of money back in the day is that you couldn't get a phone because phone companies needed you to have an address,

and needed you to have a bank account and all sorts of other stuff. Evelyn says Richard saw these folks needed phone lines and came up with an idea. He bought a voicemail system and had it installed in his basement. And how it worked is that Richard could rent phone numbers out to his clients, only they couldn't make calls on those lines. Instead, people would call them at their number and leave a message. So a lot of people who were kind of shady or a lot of people, like this is what they did, is that they had a, you know, a block of different numbers.

and oh, that's the number where I'm a insurance adjuster, and that's the number where I deal out of. And so they had a system like that, and it was very cheap. It was like $10 a month for a mailbox. So people would just come in with their dollars and whatever. Richard had found a backdoor into the phone industry. More and more people were paying Richard so that they could receive voicemail messages. And it was around this moment, Evan figures,

Richard might have had another one of his, there's a way to make more money moments. This is just me. but I think he's nosy as all get out. So I would imagine he's probably listening to the messages and realized that a lot of people were meeting. And that probably gave him the idea. He's like, ah, this is kind of computer dating.

So he bastardized a voicemail system and tinkered with it and got it to work as a personal system. That's kind of smart. It is. It really is. Once Richard created this personal service, he asked Evelyn to be the new voice of his fledgling phone system. It would be her job to record all the prompts and menus for Richard's different phone services, which were constantly changing.

I'm curious, like, right off the bat, like, what did you use to say on these messages? Oh, well, it would be something like, let's get my voice. So it's pretty much like, hold on. Oh, you're okay. Welcome to Talk to Me's Q Talkers program. You'll be said into our chat line while waiting for a caller to make a direct connection with you. That's awesome. No, don't encourage me.

Richard took his personal system and created a service called Philadelphia's number one dateline. People would pay to leave each other voicemail messages. I talked to a woman who helped moderate this dateline. She told me that it was popular with people looking for partners with like-minded fetishes and fantasies. I wondered if maybe this was a really early incarnation of what would become America's hottest talk line, except without the phone sex. Evelyn told me Richard expanded the dateline beyond Philadelphia, went regional, and then went national via 900 numbers,

which is where a lot of adult content was back in the 90s. Using 900 numbers, though, was becoming a bigger and bigger problem. Parents were freaking out because they didn't want little Johnny calling up weird datelines, fetish lines, or phone sex services. Let's send one single clear message to the industry, to the parents of America and the people of America, So lawmakers started introducing bills. We do not want, we will not allow, we will not tolerate dial-up horn in this country. Bills designed to crack down on 900 numbers. It felt like the end for 900 numbers was nigh.

And it was clear Richard needed to find another way to make money. So he got a business partner who would help him do just that. That partner was a woman named Sandra Kessler. She was a so-called genius. I had rumors about from industry insiders. Oh, she's such an interesting character. Oh, my God. She's a demon.

She could get whatever she wants. From what Evelyn told me, Sandra had big hair like Fran Dresher, and talked in a sort of frenetic kind of way that might give a person an anxiety attack. And if Richard's great love was teddy bears, Evelyn said Sandra's was somehow even more unexpected. She's a robot collector.

That's how she got started. A robot collector. A robot collector. She would go to flea markets and things like that and she would just know what to pick that would be worthwhile and she made like gobs of money just knowing what to grab.

Richard trusted Sandra's business savvy unconditionally and Sandra confronted with Richard's 900 number woes had an idea. Sandra wanted to start a new company and it was actually a type of company that had only just been invented called a responsible organization or Restborg which of course is the

the most generic, boring name. Anyways, these West Borgs, they were a special kind of phone company that managed and distributed toll-free numbers. You see, a few years earlier, the FCC had tasked a small group of people with overhauling the entire toll-free system. It took years to get every detail right. I was fortunate enough to be in that whole design, and one of the things we designed is what became Restoregs.

Wow. So you're one of the designers of this current system, basically. Yes. Wow, okay. There were about 10 of us around the country. designed the whole system. Whoa. Okay, so I have so many questions for you. This is Alia Christopherson, toll three industry legend. So I'm curious just in this system that you designed, like, if I came to you in 1993 or 1994, I was like, okay, I would like to get hooked up with a toll free number. What would the pathway have been? It's the same today. Okay. You contact your Resborg and say, I want 800 lawyer.

Yeah. You know, a number like that. The Restborg determines whether it's available. If it's spare, which is what they call available, then the restborg reserves the number right then. And then nobody else can have the number. So let's say, I don't know, a tacharia wants 1,800 burrito. They have to go to one of these restborgs, maybe a big phone company like Verizon, maybe a smaller outfit. And if the numbers available, the resborg will get it for them from a big pool of available numbers. All the tachorea has to do is keep paying their monthly phone bill to the Restborg. To be in the phone business in the mid-90s or to be in a bona fide one-800 number feeding frenzy. Everybody wanted a number that spelled something,

and Rest Borgs were only too happy to oblige. Each 800 number was incredibly cheap for them to grab, but businesses were so desperate, they paid good money just to get them. So Rest Borgs were popping up left and right, and even though Alia and her colleagues had tried to hammer out every last detail of how restboards would work, there was one major floor in their design. We thought the only people who were going to be resports would be the big, long distance in local companies. So at most, we'd maybe have 30 restboards. Well, you know, there's over 300 restboards.

Wow. Over 300. Yeah. And that was never the way we visualized it. I don't know. On the one hand, it feels like you guys were so meticulous in designing the system. but the thing you didn't account for seems so shocking to me

that people would find a way to make money off of this. We didn't really design to that. We talked about it kind of on the fringes and somebody says, I don't know what kind of money-grubbing little company would become an independent resport. Turns out a money-grubbing company headed by a robot collector

and a teddy bear lover. Back in the Diamond District of Philadelphia, Sandra and Richard decided, okay, we want in on this. We're going to make our own Resborg, grab some of these 800 numbers, and use them all for our chat lines. And then we'll have people paid by credit card to use them. We'll make a killing. Richard realized that all those numbers are worth something. If it spells anything dirty,

that if you look at the traffic at the time, there were men that just sat around spelling out dirty words on their phone, wondering if it was going to be somebody saying something dirty. Really? Yeah. That Restborg, the phone company they created, was Primtel. Primtel was run by Sandra. And as she got more and more numbers for Richard's datelines, Richard realized he could be making even more money. And a few years later, in 2000, he expanded his business into phone sex, opened a new call center and moved his entire business to a whole new building.

Which was a weird move at the time because the few surviving phone sex companies were actually downsizing, asking phone sex workers to work remotely. But Rich's gamble paid off. All over the country, people were typing in dirty words in their phone, landing on one of Rich's phone sex lines, and forking over their credit card information with a chance to talk to, quote, sexy young girls, which is funny because, of course,

the new phone sex operators, sitting on the other end of the line, were in the most unsexy place imaginable. What did the space, what did the office look like? I'm just so intrigued to know, like, what was this set up? There's very much like a call center walking in where there's like a scrolling LED sign of like the top bonuses of the month. There's seasonal decorations up. I started in July. So they were like palm trees and lays and beach falls around.

You know, it's like, you know, furnishing hell to make it look like it's not as hot of a place. That's a woman I'm going to call Felmer. She worked for Richard in his phone sex call center for a year and a half. And she said she found the job challenging from the very beginning. It is so difficult to keep a horny man who is masturbating on the phone for $3 a minute so that you can get your minute quota in. Oh, was that kind of the main aim of it, was just like keep these guys on the phone? Keep them on the phone. The calls would max out at certain lengths depending on what they paid for and whether they were a preferred customer or not.

but your calls could max out at 15 minutes, 35 minutes or 45 minutes. 45 minutes? Yeah. Wow. Phelma's trick to slow these guys down and keep them on the phone was to tell a lot of jokes. Men seem to find it hard to stay turned on and laugh at something at the same time.

But maybe the worst part about the job was something I'd never even considered. When customers reached the phone sex line, they could choose the race of a woman they wanted to talk to. And so phone sex operators pretending to be women of different races. They actually got a list of stereotypical characters they could play for each one. But if a customer didn't request an ethnicity, the default was a white woman. My initial name that they gave me was, first it was Angel, and then they changed it to

Savannah. And Savannah was 5-3, 120 pounds, one. Like, just the stereotype that even other white women are like, oh, seriously? Like, you know what I mean? Just the little bubblehead from National Lampoon, cheerily. type movies. That type of thing. Yeah. This is Danielle, another one of Richard's phone sex operators. Danielle's a self-described BBW or big black woman.

In fact, most of the people working in the Cool Center were black women. And having to play Savannah really bothered Danielle. Especially at that point in my life, I was so, I had to do like a lot of, you know, therapy and things like that because being an African-American woman, you're already bombarded with you're not pretty enough, you're not good enough. you're not good enough. You're lesser than everybody else. Like, you know, there's that gradient scale.

It starts all about white women and then it's Asian and Hispanic. And then black is at the end. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, I get what you're saying. So, you know, it was really bad for myself with steam. And I was like, I can't. So Danielle broke the rules, just a little, made her default character a Greek white woman. Her managers tolerated it, but only because Danielle was arguably the best phone sex operator they had.

She says she was so good that people from around the company, used to ease drop on her calls. They thought she had to be doing something shady to be that good at her job. In fact, it was pretty clear to Danielle and Felma that Richard and the rest of management didn't really trust her phone operators. As a rule, they were purposely kept away

from the rest of the company. Thelma says the manager who ran the call center was extremely intense about it. We were encouraged not to talk to anyone in the elevators, not to like interact or bother people. I mean, we were to free to, like, I wouldn't even say second-class citizens. It was like we were like rats in the building that other people had to tolerate.

Oh, my God. We weren't supposed to know about anything. We weren't supposed to know about open enrollment when the health insurance changed. Oh, what? Very, very isolating to work there. Like, they did not want you to have knowledge about anything else that went on in that building. Which is why, when I asked Felmer and Danielle, were the calls you were taking for America's Hotters Talk Line? they were like, weirdly, we don't know.

All we did was pick up the phone. The company had a lot of different phone sex hotlines, but we didn't really have any idea which service for callers were coming to us through, which meant it's totally possible that Thelma and Danielle could have answered calls for America's Hotter's Talk Line and never even known. But Danielle told me something else that felt like a clue.

Every now and then, she would get a call from someone who didn't know they were in for some phone sex. some people oh god bless them you ever want to know how you get like an elderly person how did you how did you get this number grandma for both of us now were people like honestly very confused uh yeah yeah and often embarrassed you know especially if you had to tell them what number they called no like it's like no this is a phone text line ma'am sir I can't help you with your washing or dryer.

I don't know, maybe. I don't know what model do you have. Let's talk. According to Ilya Christopherson, the woman who helped create the toll free system, confused people ending up on the phone sex line, was the direct result of a move Richard and Sandra made to take their business beyond just grabbing sexy numbers and move into the next stage of their toll-free empire. They were the first place where I heard about mistyles,

which is now a big industry. Ms. Diles? Miss Diles. She told me that when like a shoe company announced their new toll three number, 1-800 slipper, Primetail will be watching. Primtail knows, you know, thousands and thousands of people are going to call that number. So they get the number maybe right below it. You know, they get one that's really easily misdialed.

Yeah. And they probably get the numbers, all of them that are around. around a number, you know, anything that can cause somebody to easily misdile. In the past, Primetal has denied that they have a misdile strategy. But multiple experts in the industry told me otherwise. What these experts told me is that back then, most resports assumed that out of the millions of toll-free numbers out there, only a small percentage, the ones that spelled things, were truly valuable.

The others, well, they were a dime a dozen. It's almost as if Sandra and Richard realize, oh, no, those ordinary-looking, unremarkable numbers are actually super valuable because of misdiles. Now, of course, maybe only one out of a thousand people who call your number by accident will stay on the line. But if you have, say, millions of phone numbers, you're looking at a small fortune. What I know for sure is that Sandra dedicated a whole floor of Rich's building to Prime Tale

and filled it with computers. A woman who used to work as an assistant to Richard, who I'm going to call Shelly, she hated going down there. What did it look like, their floor? Oh my God, it was lots of computer equipment. I don't know the tech at the time, but it was probably one of the reasons why it was so fucking cold down there

because some big computer servers were probably down there. It was like the offices were like purposely more creepy. It was. Bazaar. It gave this overall audience of trolls digging in mind. As Voldemort creepy as Primetime set up was, their technology gave them a real advantage of the competition. While other West Borgs had employees dutifully requesting numbers one at a time, Primdell had computer programs, grabbing numbers in bulk. And these phone numbers they were grabbing, they weren't only brand-new phone numbers that had never existed before.

They were also phone lines people thought were still theirs, that they'd lost because they'd forgotten to pay their phone bill at some point. Eventually, though, these people realized they'd lost their phone lines and were very confused. And Evelyn and Shelley, both employees of National A1, had a weird experience of seeing this phenomenon happening in the world in front of them all the time and knowing exactly why so many people were pissed off. I had a pulmonary director at 10. Call me to complain.

why is my private office number a fucking porn number? American Idol? All the numbers for their finalists were like 800. Da-da-da-da-da. So when people were trying to vote 8-88-da-da-da-da for their idol, they were coming to me. I got calls from people who had numbers in other countries and other places. I was married at the time to a podiatrist in Augusta, Georgia,

and their main office number got swiped. So people were calling the doctor's office and it would go, thanks for calling Philadelphia's number one date line. Wait, so your own husband, his phone number gets taken and when people are calling him, they're hearing you? But they didn't know it was me, thank God.

All of this, of course, sounds exactly like what was happening of America's Hotters talk line. Tons of people very confused as to how a phone sex line had taken their number. And I think it sounds exactly like what was happening

of America's hot. talk line, because it is what's been happening with America's talk line. I am now confident that when Mississippi put up their COVID line, one of two things could have happened, both totally legal. Some pool saw I'm going to make up in the Health and Human Services Office, I'm going to call them Zach. Might have misprinted the number by like one digit when they wrote their email. And Primetell, because they have so many millions of toll-free numbers, they just happen to control the number that our man, Zach, inadvertently emailed to tons of

important people. Or, Zach, bless him, actually didn't make a typo. He published the correct phone number, but he did so without realizing that a month earlier, Earl, in accounting, hadn't paid the bill for it. And in the meantime, Primtel ever seeking new numbers to make its strategy work, snapped it up without anybody realizing it. I know Primdell did at least one of those things, because with the help of my new Rest borg friends, I was able to search the database of toll-free numbers,

find out which Restore controls the number Mississippi sent out, and lo and behold, that Resborg is one of Primtel's partner companies and is registered under Richard Cohen and Sandra Kessler. Primetel was the reason that number and so many others led to America's hottest talkline. But there was this thing that didn't make sense. It's 2020.

Phone sex is not what the libidinous young people of America are turning to. Thelma told me that National A-1, Richard's company was hit really hard by free internet porn. And in 2015, she and tons of other people got laid off. It was really hard. Do you know how Richard felt about the layoffs or like just like upper management in general? They really did not like to take people's jobs. Oh, why?

I don't know. But I mean, I don't think they wanted to get rid of people until it came down to like, we're just not making the money that we used to make. So we can't sustain more people. than is beneficial. But, you know, that was the thing is we weren't competing against competitors who had similar products. We were competing against free.

From what I can tell, this glutton free online porn sites meant Primetel, yet again, had to find a new way to make money with their millions of phone numbers, which explained the different services I found when I tried to reach America's Hotters Talk Line. Thank you for calling the Medical Alert Center. Thank you for calling the Auto Savings Center. I think Primtel's alleged Ms. Dahl's strategy is still going on. The crucial difference is that now they're renting out phone numbers to businesses like medical alert and protect my car. So why is it that every once in a while a dinosaur of a phone sex line like America's Hotter's Talk Line pops up?

It bothered me that after months of reporting, I didn't know. I'd still never actually even found it or talk to anyone who'd tell me definitively that they'd heard of it. America's Hotters Talk Line seemed to appear and just as quickly vanish, like some kind of ghost. The closest I'd come to finding it was the one recording Elisa, the reporter who told me about the service, had shown me. A recording that contained a clue that had really puzzled both of us. Guys, hot ladies are waiting to talk to you. Press 1 now. Ladies, press 2 now.

The fact that America's Hotters Talk Line didn't seem to actually go to a phone sex line, that the service hung up on you after playing a short recording, I eventually came up with a theory about that. According to an industry insider, if you're a resborg like Primtel, you can't just grab numbers and hoard them. A service needs to be on each and every toll-free number you have, or else eventually you could lose it.

So I thought it would make sense that if Primetel wanted to cover their bases, I make it look like they were really using numbers they didn't have services on yet. They'd have to put something, some sort of placeholder on the line. and in this case, they'd used a recording. But my producer, Anna, thank God for Anna. She wouldn't rest until we knew for sure that America's Hotters Talk Line was a fake. So she came up with a brilliant idea. To find an antiquated, possibly fake business, we needed to use antiquated methods.

Her plan was to call as many tall three numbers as we could that included the numbers 739, otherwise known as S-E-X. Welcome to America's High. Talk Line. Oh my God. Guys, hot ladies are waiting to talk to you. Press 1 now. Ladies, to talk to interesting and exciting

guys free. Press 2 to connect free now. After all this time, I finally found America's hottest talk line. And the first thing I noticed was that it wasn't just a recording. I pressed 1 to talk to Hot Ladies, and it immediately

prompted me to record a message describing myself. Please record your message. Hit any key when you're done. Hi there. My name is Immanuel Jochi. I said I was a reporter. Then I was recording and I was hoping to interview someone for a story about America's hottest talk client.

Pretty quickly, I heard short descriptive recordings of women I could choose to talk to. A woman from Michigan who described herself as a Yupa girl, which apparently means she's a lifelong resident of the Upper Peninsula. Another woman who was looking for a sexy white dude who looked like Brett Michaels. And it dawned on me, maybe. these women weren't phone sex operators. These were women looking for white guys with questionable music taste. And then... Someone message me.

This message was sent with priority delivery. I love your accent. Where are you from? To connect live with this caller, press one. Reply with a message or please record your invitation for this caller to join you in a private conversation. Record after the tone. Hit any key when you're done. Hi. Yeah. I'm actually from England. But a lot of people I feel like have trouble

knowing where my accents from because I've lived in a lot of places. I was born in England, moved to Belgium as a kid, spent time in Ohio. Yeah. Anyways, looking forward to chatting with you. Please hold while that caller listens

to your connection request. They liked what they heard and they're ready to connect with you. You're connected. Say hi. Hi there. How are you? Fine. How are you?

I'm doing well. I'm doing well. Would it be okay if I recorded our conversation for broadcast on my show? I don't care. Okay, cool, cool. Awesome. I love your accent. Oh, thank you so much. Where are you from? Tennessee. Oh, Tennessee. Where in Tennessee are you from?

Chattanooga. Chattanooga. Oh, okay. Tanloga, right down on Georgia. Wow. I actually drove through Chattanooga earlier on in the summer. It's a really beautiful town. it is I'm in Indiana now people say

why did you move to Indiana I said that stupid you got stupid crazy this is Jean she's 77 she told me she heard about

America Totto's talk line from one of her friends and she very clearly is not a phone sex operator can you just tell me about this service like what is this line about

Like, is it like a date line? Well, kind of. You can, you talk to some nice people. You talk to some filthy mouth guys. They're all time wanting to know if it's true what they say about redheads. This guy sent me a message and one of the carpet matched the drapes. I went back to him to know the carpet's green. Did he respond?

No, he didn't say a word. There's married men on him. There's some guys looking for a female to be with him and his wife. I thought you were crazy bad. You're not here for that? No. And what are you here for? What are you looking for?

Just see if I can find a friend to talk to. Somebody that doesn't have a filthy mouth. Jean is not who I expected to find on America's Talk Line. She lives in a nursing home, suffers from a condition that is making her slowly lose her sight. And about a year ago, she started calling up the hotline and became a regular. I don't know. Sometimes I get on every day. Just listen.

Don't talk to anybody. Just listen. Just see who's on there. Do you have, like, a lot of visitors who come see you? No, we're not allowed to have visitors right now. Oh, because of COVID. Yes. They stick you in a room and you can't go anywhere.

Oh, so you guys can't even socialize amongst each other in the nursing home right now. Well, they have finally started letting us go down for either breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Yeah. But we have to sit so far apart from people that I can't see who they are, and you don't really get to meet them when you're at one end of the table. They're six feet away at the other end. Of course, with my eyesight, I tell people they're just fuzzy blobs. I'm sorry.

Don't be. I've got what I've got. Talking to Jean reminded me with my granny. She's in her 80s, and is alone in England. She actually has one of those medical alert devices. Refuses to wear it, though, which is a major problem, because she falls from time to time. I spoke to her the other day, and at first I didn't get through because she was on another call. She always seemed to be on another call talking to some friend or family member.

I think it's what's made these last few months of being unable to leave her house bearable, talking to people. And chatting with Jean, I realized she didn't have a lot of that at the moment. I've been sort of half right about America's hotline. It wasn't a phone sex line or even a dead-end recording. Maybe it was a placeholder, a near-zero overhead, unstaffed callback to Richard's first innovation, that primital only brought out when they needed to call dibs on a line. But it was performing a service. It kept people like Gene Company.

It was a tonic for the lonely Well, I hope that I have like Provided like some form of entertainment To break up some of the monotony today You did And like I say, I still love your voice Oh, thank you Well, it was such a pleasure talking to you, Gene

You too Okay, you have a good day We'll do, same of you Bye bye bye now Okay, bye bye A couple updates on this story Since we first aired it, America's Hotest Talk Line has continued to pop up in different places. Just earlier this year, a fictional crisis phone number using the movie Don't Look Up

apparently led to America's Hotter's Talk Line when viewers decided to call it. I called up with Gene, the woman in the nursing home, just last week. She's doing okay. Her eyesight is still getting worse and she's still in the nursing home, but she uses the hotline a lot less nowadays because she made a good friend on there, and they've been talking a lot. Jean also told me that she gets to see her family members a lot more now. In fact, this summer, her son is getting married.

And Jean told me that she's so excited to go pile it up with her family at the wedding reception. Reply All is hosted by Alex Goldman and me, Emmanuel Jochi. This episode of our show was produced back in 2020 by Fia Benin and Anna Foli, with additional production help from Lisa Wang and Mahini McGaul-Gaulke. It was edited by Tim Howard with additional editing from Bethel Habde. Today's episode was mixed by Rick Kwan and Haley Shaw. Shout out to the rest of the team who make the show a reality every week. Intern Sam Gabauer, producer Sonia Desani and Kim Native Fame Pietasser,

and editor Damiano Marquetti. Theme song and original music by Breakmaster Cylinder. Fact-checking on this episode was done by Michelle Harris, additional music production by Mariana Romano, and original music by Luke Williams. Special thanks to Therese April, Joel Bernstein, Paul Faust, James Brown, Mike Connors, Rehan Harmanci, Motasik, Alina Mazzis. You can listen to our show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thank you so incredibly much for listening, folks. We'll see you in two weeks.