It was like something out of a movie: a US Capitol Police Special Agent and three San Francisco cops drop by a suspect's home to ask about threatening phone calls targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They know the calls all came from a specific phone number, one assigned to the VoIP provider magicJack, but the suspect denies that the number is his. The agent steps into the other room and uses his cell phone to call the number. A telephone connected to the suspect's computer starts to ring, and the suspect answers it. "Hello," says the agent.

When the agent returns to the room and asks if the suspect wants to change his story, the man admits that the calls were his own.

The moral of the story: if you're going to call people and taunt them with the untraceability of your phone number... make sure the phone number is actually untraceable.

Traceable magic



According to a sworn FBI affidavit (PDF), here's how the case went down. Between February 6 and March 25 of this year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi received at least 48 phone calls from the same telephone number. The calls came to her California home, her San Francisco office, her DC home, and her husband's California office. On March 20 alone, 19 calls rolled in; the next day, Pelosi received another six.

According to Pelosi, the male caller told her, after the use of "abusive, harassing, and obscene language" (some of which Pelosi did not even want to repeat to investigators), that if she voted for the recent health care reform legislation, "when you go back to California you won't have a home to go back to."

The FBI and the US Capitol Police looked into the matter. What they discovered was a subject not careful about his identity; the man left numerous voice mail messages, including ones that allegedly threatened Pelosi. He also told a staffer at her San Francisco office that "this number is, and the number I'm calling from is, untraceable so if you're trying to trace it, have fun."

The Capitol Police did try to trace it. A grand jury subpoena revealed that the number was assigned to a magicJack account. MagicJack, a small USB dongle that provides cheap VoIP calling through a computer, could be cheaply purchased; this particular magicJack came from a local Radio Shack.

But the account information was wrong. It listed a San Francisco name and address, but when agents stopped by to interview the owner, they determined that the voice was wrong. After listening to the recordings, the owner then identified the voice as belonging to a man from church, Gregory Giusti. (Giusti had actually been booted from the church a couple years before, it appears, after making "harassing telephone calls to other members.")

Giusti also lived in San Francisco, and agents paid him a visit. Special Agent Andrew Pecher of the Capitol Police led the questioning on March 30. After Giusti denied making the calls to Pelosi, Pecher tried his scheme:

During the course of the interview, SA Pecher used his cellular telephone to dial the number that had been calling N[ancy] P[elosi] (757) 509-****. After SA Pecher had done this, the telephone attached to the "Magic Jack," attached to Giusti's computer started to ring. Giusti answered the telephone and said, "Hello." SA Pecher heard Giusti on the other end of his cellular telephone say "Hello." Then, SA Pecher again asked Giusti if he ever called N.P., to which Giusti replied "yes."

According the FBI affidavit, Giusti eventually admitted his threats, saying only that "I was upset and I did not mean anything by it." Giusti was apparently operating under the belief that the magicJack he had received as a gift five months earlier was untraceable.

Giusti was charged last week in a federal San Francisco court with making threatening and harassing phone calls to a government official. He faces up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 if found guilty.