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I worked at the Pentagon for 3.5 years and retired in 2013. One of my jobs was to monitor the monthly telephone bill and watch over the 500-odd telephone numbers. I came to realize about six months into the job, there were at least twenty numbers which could not be found within the work areas (yeah, I actually did a walk and wasted two entire days making a physical inventory).

So I did something that hadn’t been done in a decade there within that agency....I told the telephone gurus to cut off service to these twenty numbers (we were paying $21 a month for each number). Man, that got a big stink within twenty-four hours.

Half of the numbers dissolved away with no one saying anything but the other half had been taken by people as they left the agency and went to another agency.....some were upper-level people and couldn’t understand how I could cut off their service. I asked them if they worked for our group and they admitted they hadn’t been part of the agency for at least five years.

My guess is that this Tech company got brought in and given numbers back five to ten years ago, and the numbers eventually got used by non-company people as people or functions shifted from office to office or cubicle to cubicle. The company probably did an inventory like I did, and said that if their employees weren’t at that number.....they’d refuse to pay the $21 a month, so they cancelled the number. It might be that simple.

It could be that. But why the lawsuit?

I did an audit of a local general aviation facility a few years back. We found 65 numbers that rang to buildings that had been torn down, maintenance sheds which hadn’t been used in years, and 20 which rang to an old control tower that hadn’t been used in 4 years.

Saved them about 30 grand.