All language subtitles for S01E01 - 1-900-SEX

-Go on, pick it up and call.

-In the 1980s,
horny men of all ages

began dialing in
to a new sexual revolution.

[ Phone ringing ]

-Hey, baby.

- Call 1-900...
- Call 1-900...

-1-900...

-Anyone with a phone
and a carnal fantasy

can find
a more-than-willing partner.

-My name is Felicia.

I'm 19 years old and
I'm currently staying in L.A..

-You got to talk about
whatever you wanted.

If you liked getting golden
showers, being spanked,

you could talk about
dressing up as a baby.

-It's like the brilliance
of women to be patient enough

to get a dumb man off
over the phone.

-You like being
a dirty little pet

for Madame Master, don't you?

-And then make, like,
a ton of money

while doing it.

-Abso-motherfucking-lutely.

-Callers can never be sure
who is on the other end.

-When somebody was calling
for small, Asian, submissive,

they were getting me.

And when someone was calling
for big black girls,

they were getting me.

-It was just some woman
in a cubicle laughing

with her friends
about what an idiot you are.

-But it's no joke when
the phone bill arrives.

-When he started calling,

he got hooked as if
he couldn't stop calling.

-Conservative politicians
in Washington

call for an end
to phone sex lines.

-Isn't it about time we removed
the profit motive

from activities
that are sick and obscene?

-Who was using these
1-900 numbers

to call these racy messages?

Well, in some instances,
children.

-The will of the people
is to ban dial-a-porn.

[ Phone ringing ]

-Meanwhile, the person answering
your 1-900 call

has just one job...
Keep you on the phone.

-Is it going to be a $15 call
or a $600 call?

Let's see what
we're going to do.

[ Laughs ]

♪♪

-In the time way
before the internet...

[ Phone ringing ]
- I'll get it.

Most homes still had
a magical portal

to the outside world...

The telephone.

-Oh, really? How wonderful.

-We constantly fought
over the phone,

and I remember my mom
yelling at us all the time

if we were using the phone,
because she couldn't use it.

-Do you mind if I come over
and talk to you?

-We did have two lines
in the house.

-I was like the lord and
mistress of the second line.

-Then during the 1980s,
a new prefix is rolled out

that will launch
an entire industry...

1-900.

-Telephone service
is in the midst of a revolution.

You can still reach out
and touch someone,

But interactive technology
in the form of

900 and 976 phone numbers
has now made it possible

for others to touch you back.

-1-900 didn't start out
for sex lines,

but as a way
to deliver news and information.

The idea is, you could call a
900 number and get the weather.

I mean,
it seems very quaint now.

You could get a traffic report
and there would be a small fee.

-You could get like, sports
predictions, sports scores.

-♪ It's rational just to ♪

♪ Call National Sports
for all the latest reports ♪

-The 900 number
was revolutionary.

Everybody had
an 900 number then.

-Including pop stars,
who set up phone lines

to connect with fans.

Well, those willing
to pay a fee.

-Hi.

-We're the
New Kids on the Block.

-Now you can hang tough with us
24 hours a day

on our brand new hotline.

-Just pick up
your phone and call.

-I think there was one
where you could call up

and the Crypt Keeper
from "Tales from the Crypt"

would tell you a scary story.

-Plunge into my hallowed hall
of horror!

-Awesome.

-What makes people
all over America

break down and cry like this?

Call 1-900...

-But 900 numbers soon attract
the interest

of America's
most innovative industry.

-Any time you have a new form
of technology,

somebody figures out how to make
money in adult entertainment.

-Hi, I know you're watching TV
right now,

but there's a new way,
a completely different way

to meet a girl just like me
over the phone.

♪♪

-These new 900 numbers
allow people to dial

into a sex scene
where they are the star.

-I think the average customer
for phone sex lines

were probably like,
lonely truckers

and your dad.

Yeah, your dad.

-It's cheaper than
going to bars.

-The phone ads become
a cultural phenomenon.

-Phone sex ads were incredible.

I feel like they started
around like, 11:00 p.m.

-Remember the good old days
when you used to call me

and we could talk
about anything?

I mean, anything.

-She's moving around,
there's soft light,

and she's like, "Are you lonely?
Do you need someone to talk to?

Call 1-900. Get sex.

It's only $49.99 a minute."

-I have a jingle from a phone
sex ad seared into my brain.

And it is...

♪ You don't have to be
alone tonight ♪

♪ Just call me ♪

-♪ Don't be lonely ♪

- ♪ Just call me ♪
- ♪ Let's party ♪

-And then, like a chorus
of horny cats in heat,

all the girls went...

[ Moaning ] "Pick up the phone!"

-Pick up the phone!

-And I wish they sang it better
than I just did.

But they didn't.
It was so painful.

-Pick up the phone!

-Yet thousands of men play
through the pain

and pick up the phone,

including a curious teenager
in Canton, Ohio.

-I got the idea to call
some 1-900 numbers

because maybe I could learn
something about sex.

My name is Dr. Justin Lehmiller.

I run "The Sex and Psychology"
blog and podcast,

and I study the science of sex.

My sex education
was purely abstinence-based.

The only message that
we really got was don't do it,

and if you do do it,

you're probably going
to get pregnant or die.

There I was sitting in my car
at this pay phone

at the edge of
the grocery store parking lot

using this calling card
to place 1-900 calls.

-Justin quickly learns
the biggest challenge

of calling a sex line...
It's interactive.

-One of the big questions the
operator is going to ask you is,

"What are you into?
What do you want?

What turns you on?"
And I honestly had no idea.

So it turned out
I was pretty bad at phone sex...

Like, spectacularly bad.

-But some teenagers take to it
better than others.

-I'd talk to them,
and I was pretty shy,

and jerking off frantically
the entire time, of course.

-Welcome to Secret Encounters.

Find a sexy friend, a hot date,
or maybe even your soul mate.

Share your intimate thoughts
with a sexy voice.

Or have a private phone fantasy.

-My name is Noah Brand.

In, like, seventh, eighth grade,

some of the girls at school
would play truth or dare

with each other.

"I dare you to kiss Noah"

was considered a
game-ending foul because

come on, you can't ask that.

-But on a 900 call,

Noah could ask
anything he desired.

I could say whatever I wanted.

I wouldn't have to be looking
at that person

in class the next day, you know?

For a little while there,
I was calling every night.

I remember my mom
coming into my room to say,

"Would you like to tell me why

we have a $350
phone bill for phone sex?"

I guess I... I was kind of
hoping that wouldn't come up.

-It quickly became
controversial,

because who was using
these 1-900 numbers

to call these racy
pre-recorded messages?

Well, in some instances,
children

were driving up
their family's phone bills.

-Noah didn't want to stop,

so the teenager
found a workaround.

-I had come across a program

that generated
valid credit card numbers.

So, yeah,

I guess I kind of committed
felony credit card fraud.

-I'm so glad you called.

-And he wasn't alone.

-It honestly...
Now I'm thinking about it,

it was all to just get teenagers

to steal
their parents' credit card.

-When some families started
getting phone bills

running as high
as $5,000 in one month,

they realized their children

had been dialing up
the recordings.

-When he started calling,

he got hooked as
if he couldn't stop calling.

-But soon, the objection to kids
paying money for phone sex

becomes more about the sex
than the money.

The controversy makes the news.

-When we have babies having
orgasms over the telephone,

when we have women being tied
and beaten and chained and men,

I think it's time
to look seriously

at what
the phone company is doing.

-The media wants to
create a narrative

that there are like,
porn boogeymen

that are coming
for your children.

-And so it provoked concern
not only on the part of parents,

but lawmakers.

What do we need to do to clamp
down and regulate this?

-The 1960s are long over,
and shows like "Family Ties"

celebrate a new,
increasingly uptight America.

-The family unit is the one
true constant in life.

-You had the Reagan
administration come into power

in the '80s that launched
an anti-porn movement

and an anti-1-900-call
movement as well.

-Isn't it about time we removed
the profit motive

from activities
that are sick and obscene?

-To the delight of anti-porn
crusaders, Congress responds.

-There are powerful interests
that are making a lot of money

in this business
that want to continue

to have this trash available
to the kids of our country.

Indeed, all the people
of our country.

-This perversion

of the telephone lines
of our country,

this corruption
of the public marketplace,

where you're going to leave it
to credit cards and assume

that you're going
to trick children.

-In 1989, they pass a law
banning sexual messages

on the phone for profit.

The government, the guys
who don't get no coochie

is always thinking they know
where it don't belong.

And people is having fun.

-But the phone sex industry
isn't about

to just hang up and go home...

-Taking that credit
card number now. [ Moans ]

- and will soon dial up
even more controversy.

-What are you waiting for?

[ Phone thuds ]

♪♪

-Hey, sweetie.
I'm just sitting here alone.

-I like to really work up a good
sweat till I'm just, like,

dripping with it,
just running down my body.

-In the late 1980s,
the 1-900 dial-a-porn industry

is facing a congressional ban
that could be

the end of the line
for the lucrative industry.

-The will of the people
is to ban dial-a-porn.

-But civil liberties groups like
the ACLU jump into the fray.

-The government steps in
to start saying things

about what people can say
or what people can hear,

the First Amendment, which says
Congress shall make no law

respecting the freedom of speech

steps in to
put some limits on it.

That's really where
the issue comes from.

-The battle over
whether Americans have

a constitutional right
to talk dirty on the phone

makes its way to
the highest court in the land.

-The Supreme Court
refused today to outlaw

sexually explicit
telephone messages

in the billion-dollar industry
known as dial-a-porn.

In a unanimous decision,

the court said Congress
violated free speech protections

when it passed a law banning
all such messages.

-The court holds a ban on
obscenity, but not indecency...

A victory for free speech
and horny people everywhere.

Spread me wide. [Moans]

[Moaning] Taking that
credit card number now.

Or press 9
to be billed directly.

What are you waiting for?

-Where's my wallet?

-Alright.

-With phone sex now legal,

the industry goes looking
for new operators

willing to talk dirty
for a living.

-I was living in New York.

I was living in a two-bedroom
apartment with about six people,

and we kept seeing ads
in the back of the Village Voice

that advertised phone sex.

Easy money.
Easy, flexible schedule.

I'm Alex.

Once upon a time, I worked
in an office doing phone sex.

When I was a kid,

I was absolutely sure that
I was going to be on Broadway.

I had curly hair
like Bernadette Peters.

-I'm overwhelmed.

-And I was absolutely sure
that I was

going to have her
as a mentor one day.

-A struggling actor
still in college,

Alex and her roommates
joke about

doing phone sex
to pay the bills.

-One day we finally decided,
okay,

what if we weren't just joking?

What if I actually applied
for this?

When I first went in,

I think I was wearing
almost a business suit,

which was certainly laughed
at when I walked in.

So I came in
and introduced myself,

and they immediately
just put you on the phone

with a real customer.

-They worked in places
that on the surface

just wouldn't sound like
sexy environments.

-It was just some woman
in a cubicle smoking all night

and just laughing
with her friends

about what an idiot you are.

-Madam Mina's cubicle is in
a large office in Los Angeles.

-My professional name
is Madam Mina.

The centers I worked at,

they would have you work
at night

with pretty much
the meat and potato girls.

These are the ones getting
slammed with calls back-to-back.

Usually it was women
that you would never think

would ever be involved
or know anything about sex.

[ Phone ringing ]

There was several grandmothers
on the phone.

-So you want to...

-Making straight-up shawls
for their grandbabies

that they're sending out
at the end of the week,

but their voice sound
like a straight-up

21-year-old college girl.

[ Phone ringing ]

-The beginning of most 900 sex
calls follows a similar script.

-They usually have
an impromptu spiel

that lets the caller know that
they're going into the portal.

-I'm excited to hear from you.

So excited that
I'm going to give you

five free minutes on this call.

Experienced callers,
enter your credit card now

or at any time
during this message.

-And then like, the beginning
of the prompt to the caller

will be like,

"Hi, you're calling because
you too enjoy college girls.

These barely legal princesses
are studying,

waiting for you to call
and keep them entertained."

So there it's already
like, feeding you.

This is what we're here for,
for the caller.

And I would hear...
[ Imitates ding ]

[ Imitating college girl ]
Barely legal college girl.

Suddenly, you are
this teenage girl.

[ Imitating college girl ]
Hi, my name is Felicia.

I'm 19 years old and
I'm currently staying in L.A.

I really like
a lot of comic books.

I go to a lot of
anime conventions.

I love kawaii.

-Back in New York, Alex is using
her theater training

to comply with callers'
race fetishes.

-When I was playing an
Asian girl on the phone line,

I would use a California accent.

"Oh my God. I'm like,
so excited to see you.

And oh my goodness,
you won't even believe

what we're going to do tonight."

When I was supposed to be black,

I almost always just had
a Southern accent.

I learned a lot
while doing phone sex

about how sex and power
are intertwined.

A lot of men expected you
to not take offense

at what they were saying
when it came

to stereotypes and racism,

because you worked for them
in that situation.

-Noah, who spent his teenage
years calling phone sex lines,

later gets curious
about the job of answering them.

-Fast forward a few years,
in between college,

I was looking for stuff
I could do

that I could do
sort of on my own terms

and my own schedule,

and the notion of phone sex
occurred.

-Noah is in his 20s,
living alone when he takes a job

answering 900 calls
on his home phone.

I did not get any training.

I think I was working

for a pretty
bottom-of-the-barrel outfit.

I was pretty much a warm body.

Almost all the calls
I got on the phone sex line

were from guys.

I honestly thought
it would be grosser than it was,

because I'm not
into guys myself.

I just thought of it as acting.

Keanu Reeves
isn't actually an assassin,

but he pretends to be one.

I'm not actually gay,

but I pretended to be because
that's what these guys wanted.

[ Phone ringing ]

[ Deepens voice ]
Hi, my name's Arthur.

I'm glad you called.

What do you like?
What's your name?

Oh, that sounds nice.

[ Normal voice ] Arthur is
whoever he needs to be.

Maybe he's a firm,
take-charge kind of guy.

It was like, "How about
you get on your knees.

I want to see you
on your knees."

Or, you know, maybe he's shy.

"Oh, God, when you touch me,
I get goose bumps,

and I just don't know
what to do,

but don't stop."

-The first phone call
I ever did,

he was obsessed with pregnancy.

I had never been pregnant
at the time.

I was 19 or 20, and I imagined
what it would be like

and started describing it.

"Oh, sweetie, I'm so pregnant.
None of my shirts fit.

They're just riding up,
and you can start

to see my belly and the
underside of my boobies."

-Phone sex is great,
even without the FaceTime.

There's a thing called your
imagination that's been stifled

by all the visuals
that we're fed.

But if you just close your eyes,
honey, lay there in the dark

and have somebody
talking to you...

[ Dialing ]

[ Phone ringing ]

-Who's my favorite
little tart tonight?

-Hopefully I am.

-Fantasy is the name
of the game, man.

We're sort of talking about,
like, using language

to evoke something
that appeals to all five senses.

How does pussy taste?

What does it smell like
when you're huffing an armpit?

What are the squelching
sounds of sex?

-Just imagine that I am there
just holding it

right in front of your face,

stroking it,
teasing you with it.

-Improv is the closest analogy
to phone sex.

You take with the other person's
giving you and you build on it.

Even just having somebody
give a prompt like, you know,

"Would you like to hear
about my underwear?"

Well, it hadn't occurred to me,
but now that you bring it up,

yes, yes, I would.

-Take a deep breath.

-[ Inhaling deeply ]

[ Exhaling deeply ]

-That's right

-Your pleasure and what you want

is all that matters.

-Oh.

Such a good, good boy.

-Just the freedom
listening to somebody voice

and closing your eyes

and just going into that zone.

And then, boom. "Goodbye."
[ Dial tone ]

-It was a game
in a certain sense, like,

alright, how do I get

this repressed Minnesota
Lutheran off?

-Uh...

Oh, jeez.
- Yeah.

-One of the biggest allures
of phone sex is secrecy.

If a caller has a weird turn-on,

that's between him
and the operator.

-You got to talk about
whatever you wanted.

If you liked getting
golden showers,

which is urinate...
Someone urinating on you.

You could talk about
being spanked.

You could talk about
dressing up as a baby.

-There was a man who regularly
called all of us.

When he was younger,

his mother dated someone
named Jim,

and he would watch
from the stairs

at the end of their night

as Jim took his mother
to the front door,

gave her a kiss,
grabbed her nipples

and twisted them and said,
"Baa for me, darling."

And then she would baa
like a sheep.

He would tell the whole story,

and then he would have you baa
as loudly as you could.

And since you're in a cubicle
that often led to girls

under their desks,
holding on to their headphones,

going "Baa, Jim, baa,"
and other people going,

"Oh, you got Jim?
Yeah. Got you."

Baa, Jim.

-It's like,
the brilliance of women,

because I think it really
only works that way for,

like, women to be patient enough

to get a dumb man off
over the phone

and then make, like,
a ton of money while doing it.

-To prove his point,
Mina remembers how she got men

to run up big phone bills

by playing Santa's
least sexy elf.

-It was Christmas weekend.

Me and a couple
of my staff friends

were all working that shift,

so to keep the rest
of my staff awake that night

because it was the grave shift,

every caller that would call

will be talking
to a sex elf named Sprinkles.

They'll hear the prompt too,
like... [ Imitates ding ]

"Home alone."

That'll be the guy calling
into Home Alone land.

He'll be like, "Uh, hello?"

[ Imitating elf voice ]
"Hi, what's your name?"

"Uh, Jonathan?"

"Hi, Jonathan.
My name is Sprinkle.

What are you doing right now?"

"Uh, I'm...

I'm at home right now,
I'm naked,

and I'm just stroking
my cock right now."

"Ooh, I love putting sprinkles
on cocks,

especially when
it's multicolored."

Now, the odd part of that
is only three guys ever hung up.

For some reason, Sprinkle gets
a good call time.

-[ Moaning ]

-And when you get paid
by the minute,

call time is what counts.
- Hello.

-I didn't want someone
to cum right away.

If they came right away,

I wasn't going to make
the money that I needed.

-Usually 10 minutes is
like, the sacred time,

which if you can have a caller
over 10 minutes,

you're now in bonus time.

The longest call
I kept someone on for

that was awake was 4 hours.

And yeah,
that was a $600 phone call.

$600 phone call. Thank you.

[ Phone ringing ]

-Anytime you can use technology
to transgress a social taboo,

there's money there.

There's good business there.

Like, there's fortunes
to be made there.

-But the sex operators earning
money off male callers

soon learn an ugly truth.

In the world of 1-900 numbers,
men giveth and men taketh away.

-I don't remember exactly
what I got paid,

but it was somewhere
between jack and shit.

♪♪

-I hate to point out
the obvious,

but you are, in fact, a hooker.

-Hollywood's most powerful
publicists

couldn't have done more
for the image of sex workers

than 1990's "Pretty Woman,"
the tale of a streetwalker

who discovers true love
and high-end shopping.

-We're going to be spending an
obscene amount of money in here.

-But the film's windfall
at the box office

seems almost insignificant
compared to the money

made that same year from
225 billion phone sex calls.

-Hear for yourself the inner
thoughts of women

who know what they want.

-With the legality
of dial-a-porn now settled,

the industry begins
to rapidly expand.

8,000 new 900 lines are created,

and someone has to sell
those lines.

Meet Steve Wilkins.

-My friend James,
he called me up and he said,

"Get your ass over here.
We're making money."

-After years of partying,

Steve is looking
to get clean and get a job.

-I had, like, five DUIs
throughout the '80s.

That all ended up with me doing
some jail time in, like, 1991.

I heard about Simtel
and I heard that Simtel

were looking for people,

and I called them
and we chatted.

I got hired on there

and very quickly
became the sales manager.

-Steve's job is to pitch

a get-rich-quick scheme
around 900 lines,

just like infomercial
front man Don Lapre.

-No wonder why you can make
so much money with the 900 line.

All you have to do is

get people to pick up
the phone and dial.

-Someone in charge of
the sales team would place ads

that went like,
"make money while you sleep,"

advertising for potential
investors to buy phone lines

and use them as businesses.

-The simplest to sell
were the raunchy,

easy-to-remember
phone sex 900 numbers.

-I was surprised that I could
make so much money

from a stupid sales job.

I was literally selling
900 numbers

and getting sober
at the same time.

In the early '90s, advancements
in telecommunications

are quickly co-opted by
dial-a-porn companies.

They develop tools
to run hundreds of sex lines

to a single call center.

But the billion-dollar
innovation is the billing.

They add charges straight
to a customer's phone bill.

-Using the telephone billing
platform to take people's money

was very innovative and creative
in kind of an evil genius way.

You had to pay your phone bill.

It was a utility...
Pay your phone bill,

or else your phone service
is cut off.

-So now people who can't even
qualify for a credit card

can still run up
phone sex bills by the minute.

-Wasn't it like $4 a minute
or something insane?

I mean, they made so much money
hand over fist, literally.

-Free for the first 45 seconds,

and then it was like $8.99
a minute after that.

People were losing their homes

to get off
on the phone with strangers.

-You'd call for a minute
and they go, "Ooh, yeah.

I want to just suck your..."

Click. "For $5.99, you can..."

"Oh, my God,
where's that goddamn card?

What you want to do
with my cock?"

And it goes up to like,

thousands of dollars in no time.

-What service
are you looking for today?

-But while keeping customers
on the verge and on the line

helps generate huge amounts
of cash for the bosses,

the operators only earn
an hourly wage.

-I don't remember
exactly what I got paid,

but it was somewhere
between jack and shit.

I've joked that, you know,
if I had a nickel for every guy

who called me up
who was in the closet...

Oh, wait, I do.

-When I kept them on for
longer than 10 minutes,

I would start to be eligible
for certain prizes.

The prizes were things
like mini nail polishes

and mini lipsticks.

-Along with the low pay
comes even less respect.

-I don't think that they thought
of us as adults all the time.

We were girls, not women.

-That stigma against sexuality,
against the sex industry,

against porn,
against adult entertainment...

That's something that, like,

everybody that works
in the sex industry feels.

-Let's roll sound.

-Tina Horn hosted a podcast

to investigate the largest phone
sex company, American TelNet.

-One of the things that we found
in telling that story

is that executives
and a lot of the managers,

they never interacted
with the operators at all.

In fact, they oftentimes
actively looked down on them

and would describe to us

that they looked down on them,
like, shamelessly.

-Soon, the American TelNet
executives no longer

have to look at the operators.

They move them to an old
Toys 'R Us warehouse across town

from their fancy
new office building.

-Can you help me?

-If you were a person
working in the adult business

in any type of medium,

doesn't matter
if it was phone work or etc.,

it was something
you would not admit

to your friends and family.

There wasn't award ceremonies

for women doing
the kind of work that I do.

-Where's your favorite toy?

-It isn't just the bosses
looking down on their employees.

Sometimes the customers believe
the operators are beneath them.

-There was one police officer
who often called

and requested me,
which always surprised me,

because I was very
uncomfortable with him,

and I think he enjoyed
that aspect of the call.

You had the option of hanging up
if somebody got out of hand,

and I multiple times
hung up on him.

And that, I think, only
encouraged him to call back.

We can talk about
having you tied up,

having your breasts turned
black and blue for me,

beating you up,
having you screaming.

I was 20 years old
and sometimes compartmentalizing

wasn't something
I was excellent at.

I remember multiple times
going to my manager

and being upset about a call
and her reminding me,

"This isn't you.
They are not attacking you."

-There was one or two dudes
I did hang up on from my end.

I'd be like, oh, dang,

I miss out on the $0.20
I'd have made

if I'd kept them
on a little longer.

But Godspeed, you pervert.

Any customer service job,
you're gonna run into jerks.

Frankly, I ran into
fewer of them working phone sex

than I have waiting tables.

-There's no escaping it.

Many people feel embarrassed
by phone sex.

-Consumers probably had, like,

a lot of internalized shame
about calling phone sex lines.

-Well, it's kind of a whole new
genre of music, if you will.

-It's high-tech Western.

-Kenny Rogers is riding high
as a country music legend

when in 1992,
a thorny secret gets out.

-She's claiming that she made
telephone calls

and that she was offended
by what she heard.

-While he was still married,

Rogers allegedly set up
a private phone line

where he put recordings
of himself

acting out fetish fantasies.

When he met nice young women,
he'd give them the number.

-The messages were
sexually explicit to the point

of just being, you know,
absolutely disgusting.

-When the tabloids reported
on the Rogers phone sex story,

the singer went on to the
not-yet-disgraced "Charlie Rose"

to deny the allegations.

-I said, look, this is not true,
first of all.

And I said,
you're killing my son.

He'd have to go to school
every day and deal with this.

Couldn't have cared less.
Couldn't have cared less.

-It turns out phone sex makes
for a good, juicy news scandal.

It's a lesson 1-900 salesman
Steve Wilkins is about to learn

when a mysterious client
invites him to lunch.

-There was video cameras
hidden all over the place...

In people's lapels.

How could we know?
How could we possibly know?

-Sometimes we all need
a special friend to talk to.

Privately, one-on-one.

-Congress had failed to kill
the 1-900 phone sex lines,

so in the '90s,
they try a new tack...

If you can't beat 'em,
regulate 'em.

-Congress passed a law

called the Telephone Dispute
Resolution Act.

When you called in,
you had to have a preamble

that described to you in a
in a easy-to-understand cadence

what the charges would be.

-This sexy service will be
charged at $2.99 per minute.

-And gave you a chance
to hang up

without incurring any charges.

Advertisements for
these 900 numbers

had to disclose the price.

-Call now
and meet a special friend.

-Only $1.99 a minute.

-...to meet a girl just like me.

-Soon, most everyone was
educated about a simple truth...

1-900 numbers cost money,

while 1-800 numbers
were toll-free.

Phone sex companies
saw that as an opportunity.

-The 800 telephone number...

time was, you
could count on it to be free.

No more.

[ Phone ringing ]
- Phone sex sellers realize

you can entice customers
with a free 1-800 number,

then easily transform it into
an expensive phone sex call

by having them dial a code.

-Call toll-free.

-So it would start off
as an 800 number call,

which is free, but then

there was something
that you did interactively

which would make it swap over.

-One day Steve,
gets news about a couple

looking to buy a phone number.

-One of the salespeople that
I was working over,

he came up to me one day
and said,

"Oh, I've got these guys
that are coming in

from back East.

They want to talk about a line.
They want to take us to lunch."

I said, "Where do they want
to take us to lunch?"

And he said, "Jeffrey's."
I said, "Jeez, yeah.

I'll go." [ Laughs ]
"Sign me up."

We got in his '60s
Lincoln Continental

and we drove across
from Westlake Village

to Malibu to Jeffrey's on PCH,

and we met with
a married couple.

We thought they were interested
in purchasing a line,

which meant money for my
salesperson and money for me.

So we were talking to them
about the business.

-Turns out that nice couple
isn't there to buy a line,

but to catch Steve
in the act of selling one.

-Meet Steve Wilkins of
Simtel Communications.

Simtel leases
and programs 800 lines,

then sells them
to potential investors.

-A "Dateline NBC News" team
armed with hidden cameras

is mounting a national
television exposé,

and Steve is the star.

-We found out fairly shortly
afterwards that they had been

literally filming
every minute of that.

-So who are these guys and how
do they get away with it?

"Dateline" went undercover
to find out.

What we discovered is
a remarkable culture

of sleaze, deception,
and big, big money.

-There was video cameras
hidden all over the place,

in people's lapels.

How could we know?
How could we possibly know?

-Over grilled salmon
and iced tea,

Wilkins explains the fancy
phone work necessary

to legally bill for 800 numbers.

-And what that is...

-So much for that free lunch.

-Let's do it.

Make as much money as you can

and get out when it's
no good anymore.

-Steve hadn't broken the law,
and now says

he never sold 1-800 numbers.

Feeling the segment
depicted him unfairly,

he sued "Dateline" and lost.

-They did say that we had
no expectation of privacy

in a crowded restaurant,
which I still think is wrong.

-And while he quits
the phone sex business,

the business
keeps right on going.

-The scams that came about,
it just became ridiculous.

It became ridiculous.

-Since 1-800 numbers
could be dialed from any phone,

places like Motel 6
end up on the hook

for a massive number
of phone sex calls

billed to rooms.

-We have 87,000 rooms.

We've got
87,000 telephones out there.

-So how much do those pricey
800 calls cost Motel 6?

-They're up to about
$40,000 a month.

-Some companies discover another
way to run up bills...

Secretly direct
the calls overseas.

-Certain countries,
as a source of revenue,

would create area codes
that had really high charges,

and then have agreements
with these companies...

Like, Moldova was one.

It was a source of revenue.

They don't care that Americans
are being ripped off on

their phone bills necessarily.

-Frank Gorman is a young lawyer
in 1998,

starting out at
the Federal Trade Commission.

-I was in the Division
of Marketing Practices,

which is in the Bureau
of Consumer Protection,

and focused on sort of
mass marketing fraud.

And one of the things that
was exciting was

our division
was really active in fighting

a new form of scam
called telephone cramming.

-Telephone cramming involved
putting unauthorized charges

on someone's phone bill.

-Frank's first project
is to look into

the largest phone sex company
in the country,

American TelNet.

-American TelNet for many years,
like, rode out

that American dream fantasy
of like,

hitting big and making it rich.

Literally, we heard stories

about buying
helicopters and buying boats.

-People were upset.
"I didn't make this call.

I didn't authorize
these charges.

I don't know what this is
on my phone bill."

-I never used a 900 number.
You know what I mean?

I don't even know
what a 900 number was.

-There were calls
from elevator phones.

There were calls
from dedicated fax lines.

They were getting
thousands of complaints,

and their attitude was,

"Well, of course, they're going
to lie about it,

either because it's embarrassing
or because they're cheap

and they're want to rip us off

and they think they
can get away with it."

-Frank sues American TelNet
in 1999.

They deny the allegations,

but eventually
settle for $39 million.

It's a sign the era
of recklessly scamming customers

is coming to an end.

But it's too little, too late,

because the phone sex
industry's days are numbered.

-The whole business
was basically ending.

We could see
the writing on the wall.

The internet was
starting to happen.

-Hey, I told you I don't want
you doing that on my phone.

-Gerry, I'm telling you,

this phone sex thing
is hilarious.

Like this Erica woman here,
look. You got to call her.

-Perhaps the biggest legacy
of the 1-900 phone sex craze

in the '90s isn't the scandals,

but the punchlines it inspired,

including when Kramer
meets Erica,

the phone sex lady.

- This is my neighbor, Kramer.
- Hello, Kramer.

[ Laughter ]

-Well, hello, Jane.

-Jerry's told me so much
about you.

I feel like
I know you intimately.

-Oh, I don't think so.
No, we never met.

I never talked
to you before on the phone.

Alright, I'll see you later.

-It was such a huge cultural
phenomenon for a period in time.

You saw it parodied on "SNL."

-[ Heavy Minnesota accent ]
I've got super large breasts,

a tight ass, and I'm wearing
a satin black garter belt.

What are you doing, Mark?

-[ Heavy Minnesota accent ]
I'm touching myself, Barbara,

and you know what?
You're making me really hard.

-Oh, yeah, baby.

I want to shove my hands
down your pants

because I'm a bad girl.

Oh, yeah.

- Oh, yeah.
- Oh, yeah.

-Phone sex becomes so profitable

that it inspires other hotlines,
including psychics.

-Take back your power, baby.
Call me now!

-Miss Cleo was a big one.

-You know, we didn't know till
later she was a total fraud.

-By her own admission,
Miss Cleo was not even Jamaican.

-I called Miss Cleo
because I believed her,

and I wanted to find out
what was going to happen to me.

But when I got the bill,
I was like,

"Oh,
this is what happened to me."

-Even Noah did some moonlighting
from his phone sex job.

-I also worked
as telephone psychic.

There was slightly
more training for that.

There was at least an interview.

-Years after working
as an underpaid

and sometimes abused
1-900 sex operator,

Noah believes his sex work,

especially calls from gay men,
provided a valuable service.

-The sex was almost a pretext.

A lot of times I realized,
I'm talking to somebody lonely

who desperately wants to hear
another human voice

speak kindly to them.

A lot of the guys I spoke
to were deep in the closet.

I know some of them
were married.

At least they told me.

So many of my calls
started off with,

"My girlfriend doesn't know
I call these lines."

-For some, phone sex provided
a desperately needed outlet.

-Both men and women
wanted to be wanted.

It's something our society
is often very bad

at providing to people,
men especially.

But I'd have guys tell me
about their bodies,

and whatever they told me
I would be delighted by,

and they loved hearing that.

"I just want to run my hands
down your body.

Does girlfriend do that?"

-It was a world
full of fantasy partners.

-It's like being a ringleader

and a puppet master
of someone's sexual interests

and knowing when and where
to pull the strings.

-I'm in the middle of
a meadow at sunset,

and I'm eating a peach,

and the peach juice is
dripping down my décolletage.

-A world full of hustlers.

-Nobody means anything
they're saying.

They're just saying this
to get you off,

and they just saying
the more enticing thing

to make you pay more money.

-Sometimes I remember how easy
it was to hook

someone on the phone
and keep them on

and feel like you
could hear the dollar symbols

as you were talking to them.

"Hey, sweetie,
I'm just sitting here alone,

and I really want to
talk to you."

-Ooh.

-It was a world of pretend
where anyone could fool anyone.

Kids pretending to be adults.

Companies pretending
to offer bargains.

Grandmas pretending
to be cheerleaders.

And average men, most of all,

pretending to bang
the girl of their dreams.

-People were desperate,

especially the guys
that couldn't get laid.

You know what I mean?
This was for them.

-An entire fantasy world
built around

just a voice on the telephone.

But all of that
was about to change.

-We had a computer in the den
in our home,

and we got
the internet in the house.

And they were like,

"Type in something
that you're interested in."

So it was like "The X-Files,"
you know?

"Tori Amos."

-On the World Wide Web, i It
doesn't take long for people

with fetishes
to find people who share them.

-The arrival of the internet
was an earthquake

for the phone sex industry,

because it was offering
something new and different

and much cheaper than what you
could get from phone sex.

With your access
to the internet,

you could get visuals,
you could get photos and videos,

and there was this plethora
of information out there

that was freely available.

You didn't have to pay
$3.99 or $4.99 a minute.

-The phone sex boom
ends quietly.

AT&T cuts its support
for 1-900 numbers in 2002.

Many 1-800 numbers
give way to websites.

But over the next ten years,
something unexpected happens.

As major brands go digital
and retire their 1-800 lines,

a company called PrimeTel
quickly buys them up.

PrimeTel collects
millions of numbers.

Now, when we called
1-800-CHICAGO,

we got something that sounds
a lot like phone sex.

1-800-WORSHIP? Phone sex.

1-800-CAMERAS?

-Yes, phone sex.

-We're standing by, just waiting

to finger ourselves
to your money.

-Yeah, like, let's do it,

let's shake up
this meeting I'm stuck in.

-So, what are you waiting for?
Pick up the phone.

-Come on, do it.

[ Dial tone ]