Fahim’s app ‘PrankDial’ used by NJ jail honcho in illegal wiretapping case
PrankDial relied on users not to make calls to 11 states where the app’s service was illegal
Fahim Saleh, PrankDial allowed users to set up a call between two other people and then secretly listen in.
Saleh found decapitated and dismembered in his New York City apartment issued a passionate defense of his fledgling company just months before his grisly murder, reported New York Daily News.
Kirk Eady, the former deputy director of Hudson County Correctional Facility, was sentenced to 21 months in prison in September 2015 for "illegally wiretapping" employees critical of his job performance.
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Eady has an ongoing lawsuit against Saleh and others for misleading him about the legality of the app, which he used to secretly monitor his critics.
Saleh wrote in a 2018 Medium post that PrankDial began as a passion project inspired by his love of prank calls when he was young.
PrankDial relied on users not to make calls to 11 states where the app's service was illegal. The app was an instant hit and generated up to $2 million annually, he wrote.
"Over its lifetime, PrankDial.com has generated more than $10 million," Saleh wrote. "No joke."
The app was no laughing matter for Eady. The former jail official used PrankDial's "evil operator" function to monitor communications between Hudson County jail union officials and the operator of a website critical of jail management.
"Eady used Evil Operator to initiate calls between them and secretly record the resulting conversations. Eady then retaliated against the union members by changing their work schedules, placing anonymous calls to their spouses accusing them of infidelity, and registering one of them as a member of the Ku Klux Klan," judges at the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in 2016, affirming Eady's conviction.
Eady sued Saleh and other corporate defendants last year, claiming PrankDial misled him about its legality. The suit noted that Eady lost his job and pension. He sought damages no less than $10 million.
Efforts to reach Eady were unsuccessful. A call to his attorney was not returned. A call to the chief operating officer of PrankDial was not returned.
