Prepaid cellphone crook's best mate

By PATRICK GOWER

Criminals are frustrating police by using prepaid mobile phones to conduct their business.

The phones are popular with crooks because there is no way of tracing their owners - there is no contract to sign or identification required when someone buys one.

The phones are also smuggled into prisons to allow inmates to bypass Corrections Department telephone security and plan crime from behind bars.

The head of Auckland's organised crime squad, Detective Sergeant Daryl Brazier, said: "Every criminal worth their salt is using one. If I was a crook, I certainly would be. They are now a major problem as far as investigating crime is concerned."

Detective Sergeant Brazier said the phones, which can be bought almost anywhere for about $70, were used throughout the underworld, whether by gangs or just the average cannabis dealer. Even hoax callers were using them.

Most criminals had been communicating through prepaid cellphones for the past year.

"If anyone's talking crime on the phone they're doing it on prepaids."

An amphetamine dealer investigated this year had made more than 400 calls on his prepaid phone in one month.

The now-imprisoned underworld king Peter Atkinson - known in criminal circles as Pete the Terrorist - used up to three cellphones at any one time so police could not trace him

The bank-robbing Screwdriver Gang used prepaid phones to taunt the police. And hoax callers, who tie up hours of police time, use them to avoid any chance of being found out.

Police are so fed up they want Telecom and Vodafone to change the way they issue the phones.

In Britain, the Government is pushing legislation that will have prepaid cellphone users register their personal details.

Detective Sergeant Brazier said the simple solution was to make phone companies require proof of identity from buyers.

The head of Auckland's armed offenders squad, Inspector Ray van Beynen, said phone companies such as Vodafone and Telecom had a responsibility to see that their equipment was used responsibly and lawfully.

"You have to be licensed to get married and have a motor vehicle and a television and all the other bits and pieces - I just wonder if some form of registering cellphones shouldn't be instituted."

Vodafone communications manager Mark Champion said that while the company sympathised with police concerns, registration or identification of users of prepaid cellphones was out of the question.

"The way they're sold is what attracts people to them - it's a simple way of organising your communication needs."

He called them "just another communication device, and if people are unable to misuse them then they will just misuse something else."

Telecom spokeswoman Lisa-Marie Richan also said the attraction of prepaid cellphones was their lack of a contract.

The president of the Auckland Council for Civil Liberties, Barry Wilson, said his group would strongly oppose any proposal to control prepaid phones.

"It's another example of snooping and prying on private citizens. It is another form of state intrusion. What is the justification?"

Police Association president Greg O'Connor said criminal use of prepaid cellphones showed how criminals could get the upper hand if police were under-resourced.

Another policeman said: "It's like the Cold War arms race. Sometimes they get ahead, sometimes we get ahead."

Mr O'Connor said the Government and the public had to realise the days of criminals sitting down and planning their next crime with pencil and paper were gone.

"This is an example of letting the free market decide your national security. It's dangerous and expensive."