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Connie Lyttle worked as an operator for AT&T in western Pennsylvania. In particular, she was supposed to act as a go-between on calls between speech- or hearing-impaired people, watching as they typed a message on a computer screen, and then reading their messages to a hearing person on the other end, communicating a doctor's appointment, a chat between friends or any other business of life.
But that's not what was happening, Connie told her sister, a Lancaster attorney.
In 95 percent of the calls she handled, the supposedly hearing-impaired person using the free service was actually a scam artist from Nigeria, trying to get money or goods from an unsuspecting business or individual, Connie said.
What was worse, Connie said, was that AT&T was profiting from transmitting the scammers' calls. The telecommunications giant earned millions, billing a fund that is paid into by telephone users in the United States, and is overseen by the Federal Communications Commission, she said.
The local lawyer shared her sister's outrage. And she took that outrage to court, filing a whistleblower suit against AT&T on her sister's behalf in 2010.
Now the Lancaster attorney is involved in the biggest case of her career, a case that is gaining national attention and now has the muscle of the U.S. government behind it.
The U.S. Justice Department recently took over Lyttle's case and is seeking damages, restitution and penalties from AT&T.
The case has been covered in the national media, in outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and Politico.
"It's super-exciting. I'm so proud of my sister for standing up against those scam calls," Rebecca said.
The Justice Department claims AT&T was paid $16 million for relaying mostly fraudulent calls since December 2009, according the lawsuit.
AT&T spokesman Marty Richter said in a prepared statement that the claims do not involve federal funds.
"As we have said previously, these issues should be addressed by the FCC, not a lawsuit," he said.
Rebecca Lyttle, 46, of Lancaster, has only been an attorney since 2005. She never anticipated taking on such a large case so early in her career but circumstances and family led her to it, she said.
Both sisters have local connections, living in Lancaster County when their family moved here in the 1970s. Rebecca lived here from the time she was in grade school until she was in high school, and later returned to attend Millersville University. Connie already was out of school when the family moved here, but lived in Lancaster County for a few years, doing factory work and living in Rohrerstown.
Connie, 55, eventually moved to Mercer, in western Pennsylvania, and got a job working as an operator with AT&T in 1997.
She often talked about her job when she saw her relatives.
"Every time we would get together, she would go on and on for hours about how it was horrible what AT&T was forcing her to do," Rebecca said. "She just couldn't stomach it."
Connie said scammers almost immediately jumped online after AT&T began offering IP Relay services, which use computers and telephone operators to connect speech- and hearing-impaired people to others, in 2003. (The service also can be provided through electronic devices called telephone typewriters, or TTYs.)
AT&T generally earned $1.30 a minute for transmitting the calls.
The service, also offered by other telecommunications companies, is limited to those who are speech- and hearing-impaired, and to domestic calls.
That's not how it worked, however, once it moved online, Connie said.
"It only took a day or two until we started getting odd calls, for people doing things such as buying mass quantities of vitamins," she said.
The scams quickly took on a pattern, she said. Callers would use what turned out to be a stolen credit card to order large amounts of merchandise, often from a small company.
Or they would find someone selling something, often through online listings, and offer to buy it with what turned out to be a bogus check. The buyer would offer to overpay, supposedly to cover shipping costs, and then ask the seller to send them a refund check for whatever money wasn't needed.
Operators quickly learned to detect a scam, by the callers' halting use of English, the nature of their requests or even the way they opened the call, often with, "May I speak with your manager?"
The scam calls quickly began filling her hours at work, Connie said.
"Some days, I only would get two calls that were regular calls," she said.
It wasn't only the operators who realized they were being used by scammers. AT&T realized it too, but refused to put in place safeguards to end the practice, according to the Justice Department suit.
AT&T received hundreds of complaints from merchants who received calls, and from its own operators, the suit said
The FCC tried to put safeguards in place at telecommunications companies to control or end the practice, starting a postcard registration system, designed to ensure that IP relay users lived in the United States.
But AT&T switched to an Internet registration system, which the company knew would be easy for scammers to circumvent, the lawsuit said.
Connie said she made a good salary at AT&T, money she used to support herself and her son. But it really bothered her to participate, even passively, in a scam, she said.
She began quietly sabotaging calls if it became clear they were from a scammer, telling both parties the other person had either hung up or disconnected, ending the calls.
AT&T fired her in 2010. Rebecca represented her sister at an unemployment compensation hearing, after which the company offered Connie her job back. She declined because the company would not guarantee she would not have to handle scam calls.
The two sisters talked about filing a whistleblower suit. At first, Rebecca tried to find a large firm to take on the case.
"For a bunch of different reasons, they felt the case didn't have merit," she said. "I was only five years out of law school. I told my sister, 'I may not be your best choice right now but it's me or no one.' I went ahead and did it."
For Connie, the suit is a way to make things right.
"I could look back and say, 'I should have quit,' " said Connie.
Now she hopes her lawsuit will punish AT&T and make sure that others don't get cheated.
The lawsuit has changed both of the sisters' lives.
Connie now works at a temporary job but is hoping to find permanent employment.
Rebecca works for a local firm but will soon go into solo practice, specializing in civil rights and whistleblowing cases.
"I've always been very interested," she said, "in helping the underdog."
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