Crime and Courts

FTC wants court to issue preliminary injunction against man accused of massive phone scam

Posted: Mar 19, 2013 4:15 PM by Irina Cates - MTN News

MISSOULA - The Federal Trade Commission wants to stop a Stevensville man accused of being behind a multi-million dollar phone billing scam from restarting his operations.

The FTC wants a Missoula judge to issue a preliminary injunction to keep Steve Sann and his co-defendants from resuming any of their alleged illegal practices. Sann is accused of running several companies and bilking customers from all over the country out of $70 million through "bogus charges" to their cell phone bills.

The FTC also wants to freeze the defendants assets to prevent them from using the money they obtained illegally.

The commission says that even though the defendants shut down their businesses, it doesn't mean that they can't start something like this again. The FTC also says if the defendants really did stop this practice, then an injunction won't harm them.

The defendants deny the allegations saying that they ran legitimate companies and people signed up for their services.

The defense also asked for a court hearing in relation to this injunction, but that hearing has yet to be scheduled.