That’s insane! The Register says she stole the 3G SIM card from an electric meter and plugged it into her laptop to enjoy free internet. The SIM card was obviously only meant to send bits of data about the meter to the power company so you could imagine their shock when the 3-month bill turned out to be $US200,000. Monks was arrested and she’s going to have to serve 6 months in jail for her theft.
I took a look at Telstra’s data rates and if you’re a pay-as-you-go customer—basically their worst rate available—it’s $US2 per megabyte. That would mean she downloaded 100,000 megabytes or around 97 gigabytes of data in a three-month span. That’s a lot of Facebooking, let me tell ya. [The Mercury.au via The Register]
Image Credit: Shutterstock/Sinisa Botas
Lazy Foosa
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 3:59 PMI find this story more of an damning inditement on the excessive fees and charges charged by telcos!!!
Gabriel
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 4:14 PMIt’s funny how someone can get jailed for 6 months for stealing a SIM card but CEO’s from the financial services industry that caused the GFC are still free, with their billions intact and still running the US and the rest of the world into turmoil. Countless lives destroyed and nothing is done about it.
Steve
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 9:34 PMI know it’s all great being an activist every now and then, but let’s not sugar-coat the fact that a woman found a SIM card and abused the shit out of it because she thought she would get away with it.
Gabriel
Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 9:38 AMAgreed but some equality would be nice. Lets not sugar coat the fact that financial industry caused a mother fucking GFC because they thought they could get away with it….oh wait, they still are.
Brent
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 4:21 PMDon’t worry, she’ll get free Facebook in jail…
Nort
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 5:00 PMAha, Jesus, I might know this woman. If it’s who I think it is, she lived in my neighborhood when I was younger. Total bogan, fat and angry, fighting with her mum in the street. Good times.
Steve
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 9:41 PM33 year old female thief from Tassie? Good odds it is her.
Plobster
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 5:33 PMBrent
May 3, 2011 at 4:21 PM
Don’t worry, she’ll get free Facebook in jail…
^^^
Or at least her face will be on the books for ever :P
Dave
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 5:48 PM“Casual” data rates for Telstra at the time were around $22/MB, so it’s pretty easy to see how $200K could have been racked up.
ozoneocean
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 6:49 PMI agree with Larry. Telstra should be facing action for those fees. They are FAR too high for the kind of service they give, epscoeally compared to those around the world. They’re helping to stifle the growth and development of a real mobile computing industry.
Travis
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 at 7:31 PMHey Casey Chan before you go bad mouthing Telstra take 1 sec and look at other Telcos. Or you be trolling?
OPTUS – Pay as You Go (PAYG):
Choose Pay as You Go and only pay for what you use with a rate of 1.5c/KB capped at $9.90 for up to 5MB. After that you’ll pay just 0.3c/KB (or approximately $3/MB).