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A variation that makes more sense. Due to the heavy incoming phone traffic (from people POd at the old bat) the office manager's had the PBX gurus set the phones to report a busy signal on all incoming calls, but the office workers could continue to make outgoing calls for ordinary office business.

Supplement that with a bit of work with your cellphone and you could do office business as though nothing was wrong.

So, that's the view from inside the office.

Now, the next thing ~ someone didn't believe the phones were all busy in all the offices so they visited one of 'em.

The first thing they did was try an outgoing call to their cellphone numbers. That worked.

Then, they tried an inbound call from their cellphones. That didn't work (hence the alleged witness saying one of them allegedly said he didn't get a call).

It all makes sense now.

O'Keefe could have stopped right there if he knew something about modern computer driven PBX operations because he proved they'd set their phones to report "busy" on all incoming calls.

Obviously he didn't know what he needed to know about PBX operations and he continued the trick when he should have simply left.

BTW, that scenario accounts for the office geeks being able to contact the US Marshalls and the FBI to come on down and get these people. They'd still be able to escape in time though the second the call didn't go through.

In the future O'Keefe should consult with people who know how to work PBXs.