About Those Phones You Buy at the Airport...

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(Cumhuriyet Newspaper, 13 January 2020)

//Ed. note: this column was written by Cumhuriyet 
columnist Barış Terkoğlu. TNT has condensed it 
in translation a  bit, but not too much.//


                          If it sounds too good to be true...

Hobart Lee Epstein, an American of Korean ancestry who was
adopted and grew up in Chicago, is a world-class businessman.
When his son married a Turkish woman, Epstein began to visit
Turkey but on 22 December 2016 he was taken into custody by
police when he landed in Istanbul during a passport check for
"robbery" -  he was charged with breaking into a car in Mersin
and stealing the goods therein. (!)

It turned out that when Epstein came to Turkey he would buy
a phone line at a kiosk at the airport, as many people do.  In
August 2014, Epstein bought a Türk Telekom phone line and
used it during two trips, the second of which ended in January
2015.  Coming back to Turkey in September 2015, Epstein
learned that he could not use this phone line anymore because
the line had not been active for more than 180 days.



                         Who was that masked man??

But there are gangs in Turkey who have their people inside
the telecomm companies and they keep track of lines like
Epstein's that are closed down for inactivity - especially those
that were allotted to foreigners in a "sarı çizmeli Mehmet Ağa"
(anonymous) context.  So Epstein's line was activated again
by Türk Telekom in July 2015 and at the end of that month the
line was transferred to Türkcell.  The line still carried Epstein's
name but was given to someone with a false Australian passport. (!)



Now, let's get back to the robbery incident in Mersin.  The
thieves who broke into the car there took two cellphones and
1500 TL in cash.  In order not to be caught, the thieves had one
of the phones activated in Epstein's name and used the phone
without worry, even though the Mersin court issued an arrest
warrant in the name of "Hobart Lee Epstein".

Unaware of all this, Epstein arrived back in Turkey to visit
his son in December 2016  and was taken into custody. He
was able to prove that he had never been to Mersin and was
not even in Turkey on the day of the car break-in so he was
released by the police.



            Does anyone remember the old 'party lines'?

Commenting on these events, Epstein said that "Without
someone inside of Türk Telekom and Türkcell, this GSM line
could not have been transferred to Türkcell in 3 days to someone
using a fake and invalid Australian passport.  All of the information
I initially gave to Türk Telekom (in 2014) was completely at odds
with this "Australian"'s birth date, physical description, etc."

Continuing, Epstein remarked that "Three years later, I'm still
trying to come to terms with the degrading and frightening
experience of being taken into custody wrongly.  Because, the
arrest warrant was for an Australian citizen, not an American
like me, and the photo on the fake passport was that of a
European, whereas I'm Asian.  If the airport police had checked
the details of the fake Australian passport they would have
realized that I wasn't the person they were looking for."

The Epstein case raises the question about the status of millions
of closed phone lines, which gangs have them and what kinds
of crimes are they being used for.  Are the telecomm companies
that never fail to issue bills each month and the state which views
such robbery incidents as "routine", searching for the gangs'
cohorts inside the telecomm companies?

 
                                      Phone home, ET.