Cramming (Fraud)

Cramming is a billing fraud in which a third party adds small, unauthorized charges to a subscriber's phone or utility bill without their consent, often disguised as taxes, fees or minor services so that victims overlook them. It appears mainly as phone cramming on telephone bills, web cramming for services a consumer never knowingly ordered, and preacquired account fraud using stolen billing information, and the U.S. National Association of Attorneys General ranked it the fourth most common consumer complaint in 2007. Regulatory penalties have followed some of the largest cases: Verizon issued 50 million dollars in refunds in 2010, and AT&T Mobility paid a 105 million dollar settlement in 2014 over premium-rate text message cramming, the largest such settlement to date. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/