FBI and IRS raid Primetel offices

National A1 Advertising and Primetel philadelphia offices raided by police FBI and IRS

Primetel and National A1 Advertising offices were raided by the FBI and IRS yesterday. A stream police, IRS agents, FBI and the US Attorney’s Office arrived at 9am on Wednesday and cataloged and carted away a U-haul truck load of material from their office yesterday. The agents refused to say what they were looking for but there is speculation that it is prostitution related to Escorts.com or HotMovies.com which is reportedly a 20 million dollar per year business in it’s own right.

Being in the toll free business, we’re naturally curious about Primetel’s biggest asset, which the agents probably aren’t able to carry out in boxes, their Billion dollars worth of toll free numbers. Primetel has 1.9 million ‘800’ numbers alone, or about 25% of all ‘800’ numbers, including literally hundreds of multi-million dollar numbers on par with 1-800 FLOWERS and tens of thousands of numbers worth well into five figures.

We think this may be very important for the toll free and vanity number business and will certainly have a lot more about this as the dust settles. This may lead to some interesting opportunities. If you’d like to see a sample list of some of their numbers or be notified if any of their millions of numbers may become available sign up for it here.

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    10 Comments »

    lymphomasucks@gmail.com says:
    November 16, 2010 at 12:54 am

    One day in the not so distant future, vanity numbers will start to become a thing of the past. As smart phones & iPhones begin to take over, you can’t just look at your numbers keypad to see what the numbers spell.

    I think repeaters etc will be the best thing to have because in order to spell a word, most people will find it a hassle to go find an old-timey phone to figure out what number to dial.

    I’ve all ready heard that some businesses don’t bother to put their vanity numbers on their advertising anymore because of that very reason.

      lymphomasucks says:
      November 16, 2010 at 12:57 am

      oh and my point was, that will stick it to those businesses hoarding vanity numbers and charging people who are trying to start up a legitimet business astronimical rates. They will have to start slashing rates to be able to sell any vanity numbers at all.

      Just my opinion, but I think in the next 5 years they will be obsolete. Primetel will get what they deserve if they had to pay big bucks for those vanity numbers that they won’t be able to sell.

        Will says:
        November 23, 2010 at 9:26 am

        How did they get all those numbers?

          Robert McCoskey says:
          November 25, 2010 at 2:41 am

          Curious to see what numbers might come available

            Bill Quimby (666 comments.) says:
            November 25, 2010 at 10:22 am

            We’ve made a list of the most valuable numbers and will probably post that along with a way to lookup what they have related to your needs.

            Bill Quimby

              User (1 comments.) says:
              December 15, 2010 at 11:33 am

              @ lymphomasucks

              You really dont know how to use smart phones i guess… All you have to do is dial the Letters instead of the numbers, the phone does the rest and thats why they call them ‘smart phones’ dumbass…

                Steve says:
                December 30, 2010 at 7:22 pm

                Hey Bill, found this and thought you might be interested. A little insight to the primetel raid.

                http://www.allbusiness.com/trends-events/investigations/15297868-1.html

                  Bill Quimby (666 comments.) says:
                  December 31, 2010 at 12:08 am

                  The url above, kind of shows what they’ve been going after although it only touches briefly on the Primetel raid specifically.

                  Bill Quimby
                  1-800 MARKETER

                    CLIFF says:
                    January 27, 2011 at 2:18 pm

                    Regarding… lymphomasucks@gmail.com .. comments on vanity numbers will be a thing of the past in about 5 years. Well thats what some said about telephones with the advent of the internet and pc about 15 years ago. However what has really happened is the fact that telephones have come roaring back in 2011 and now has about 5 times the total communications traffic daily world wide than the internet. With vanity phone names/numbers leading the way. However he was right about the ez dial repeaters are always going to be very valuable as they always have been and they do work well but there are very few of them to be had. What most people do not know is that most smartphones that have deleted the letters off the numbers on their telephone key pads has in turn added a reversed engineered QWERTY key pad that will dial the correct vanity number using the proper letters when switched to the telephone mode, believe it or not. Thats just one reason they call them smartphones.. and if yours does not preform this task then your smartphone simply has a dumb key board..!

                      Thomas says:
                      October 13, 2011 at 12:58 pm

                      can anyone tell me how to contact primetel about purchasing a number they own?

                        1 ping

                        855 numbers now available - have you got yours ? says:
                        November 1, 2010 at 12:16 pm

                        [...] numbers now available – have you got yours ? Heya, The recent raid of National A1 Advertising comes as a timely reminder of the value of toll-free numbers, in particular 800/vanity numbers. The [...]

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