The LaCrosse Tribune reports on more news from the shady world of payphone scammers, perhaps better known as “fools and their money.”

Last month we reported that Nicolaos Kantartzis would be using a payphone for the next few months. A PRISON payphone. Kantartzis went way for 3 months after programming his payphones to robodial toll-free numbers of government agencies and private companies, racking up a whopping $4,000,000 in ill-gotten dial-around profits.

For each toll-free call made from a payphone the owner of the phone gets about 50¢ in FCC-mandated dial-around compensation. Some shady payphone owners exploited this income opportunity by programming their phones to dial dial dial every toll-free number that still allowed calls from payphones (most toll-free numbers block calls from payphones).

After a while those robocalls add up and the payphone owners get rich, real rich, until they get sent away.

Now it’s time for Colin Nordstrom and Jeff Frost, of Coon Valley, Wisconsin, to answer to their scam. As the LaCrossTribune reports:

“A Coon Valley man accused of helping steal $1.2 million in a payphone scam pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to lying to the grand jury investigating the scheme.

Colin Nordstrom, 49, and Jeff Frost, 53, of Brookfield, both employees of Mid-America Payphones, were indicted for wire fraud last year.

Federal prosecutors say they operated what’s called a ‘dial-around’ scam.”

These two men pulled a similar heist as Nicolaos Kantartzis, robbing government agencies and private companies like Delta Airlines of 50¢ for every 1-second call to their toll-free numbers. Thousands upon thousands of these robo calls added up, it seemed. These Wisconsin men found their million dollar payphone at a Theater Road address in Sparta, Wisconsin, a particular phone from which their robots made a significant number of calls.

Read the full story at LaCrossTribune.com.