| Formation: | 1994 |
| Purpose: | e-zine/Phreaking/Prank call |
| Headquarters: | Portland, Oregon, U.S. |
| Leader Title: | Origin |
| Leader Title2: | Platforms |
| Leader Name2: | Internet |
| Leader Name3: | Brad Carter (RBCP) |
| Leader Title3: | Founder |
| Leader Title4: | Known for |
| Leader Name4: | The Snow Plow Show e-zine PLA Radio Voice bridge Forums |
| Phone Losers of America | |
| Size: | 180px |
| Region Served: | International |
The Phone Losers of America (PLA) is an internet prank call community founded in 1994 as a phone phreaking and hacking e-zine. Today the PLA hosts a prank call podcast called the Snow Plow Show, which it has hosted since 2012.
The Phone Losers of America were founded by Brad Carter and David R. Stewart in 1994, in an era when landlines were plentiful.[1]
The PLA text files continued until mid-1997.
In the early 2000s, with the introduction of companies offering Caller ID Spoofing, groups such as the Phone Losers of America became notable in their utilisation of the service for prank calling, for example in the spoofing of law enforcement and corporate office numbers.[2]
In August 2015, the Columbia Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri, featured the PLA in an article about a series of "strange calls" received by local residents who had signed a petition against a crosswalk construction project.[3] The article quoted an FBI representative who allegedly told the Tribune that the calls to Columbia residents "would likely be prosecuted on the local level."
In early November 2016, Carter reported that the FBI performed an early-morning raid on his recording studio, resulting in a temporary seizure of all technical equipment. The raid was triggered by an attempt to access customer profiles at numerous retail stores across the country, primarily Safeway, of which some were utilized for prank phone calls.[4] [5] The case was treated as a federal matter, and was presided over by Judge Marco A. Hernandez of the Federal District Court of Oregon. On October 16, 2017, Judge Hernandez sentenced Carter to eight months of home detention, followed by five years of probation. Carter must pay $19,600 in restitution to Safeway as a consequence.[6]
The PLA maintains an archive of answer machine messages in text-based format, which Motherboard have described as being the "ringtones of their day".[7]