Tujunga Man Sentenced to Federal Prison for Phone Scam

A Tujunga man was sentenced Monday to 18 months in federal prison and three years parole for infiltrating telephone networks and running up more than $80,000 in unauthorized charges in a five-year scam, authorities said.

Stephen Edgar McMurray, 42, pleaded guilty March 13 to five counts of wire fraud. He was ordered to pay $61,000 to two telephone companies.

Federal officials said McMurray used five different aliases to obtain 12 phone numbers. He sometimes called phone companies and masqueraded as a company employee in order to learn personal information about his victims or to manipulate various phone services, officials said.

In some cases, McMurray would fraudulently call-forward a victim’s number to a long-distance number of his own choosing, then call the victim, enabling him to make long-distance calls at the victim’s expense, according to an indictment in U.S. District Court.

At Monday’s sentencing hearing, McMurray acknowledged he had also verbally harassed some of the people he called, but said he generally bothered only “other hackers.”