"scooping" charity 1-800 numbers for "singles" lines

[paperbackwriter]

I’m not sure where to put this, because I’m not sure what to make of it. There is a story on the AP wire titled Manatee Number Leads to Sex Chat Line:

Concerned citizens calling a publicized toll-free number to report injured and dead manatees or boating violations have instead been given offers to chat with “fantasy girls” in exchange for a credit card number.

Ok, I thought, haha. Evidently the Florida Dept of Fish and Wildlife let this particular “hotline” number lapse and an outfit called “Intimate Encounters” bought it. Good for a chuckle, right?

But reading further, this outfit has done the same thing for multiple hotlines:

This is not the first time Intimate Encounters has turned a hot line into a party line. It has taken over old toll-free numbers from the conservative journal Policy Review, the World Wildlife Fund, Alltel’s wireless customer service and rape crisis lines in Maine and Arizona.

Rape crisis lines??!?!?!?! WTF? That is really low. That is despicable. Bleah.

[Revtim]

Geeze, that’s pretty low. And kinda nonsensical, too. Do they think a woman calling a rape crisis hotline is in the mood for phone sex?

[lieu]

Does simply dialing the number generate some revenue for the company?

[paperbackwriter]

From the article, I don’t think so. It is a toll-free call, but then they try to sell you per-minute phone sex billed to a credit card.

I have heard of some scams where you dial a number that you think is toll-free (e.g.,1-888-something) but the call goes out of this country to another (usually Caribbean) country where the call is billed per-minute like a 900 number. There’s nothing in the article, however, that suggests this is the case here.