PHONE LOSERS OF AMERICA▊
A phone-phreak comedy zine that started in 1994 as jokes about payphones and red boxes — and, in its meanest stretch, published a “loser list” of real people to call when you were bored. The pizzas were real. The fake classified ads were real. Thirty years later the same crew is a beloved prank-call podcast, its founder a federal defendant who paid Safeway back nineteen grand. This is the file for the funniest thing in the scene that occasionally forgot the targets were people who never asked to be in the bit.
War of words, my ass. He insulted every user on a bbs and dared us to do something horrible to him.
RBCP (Brad Carter), PLA’s editorial reply, inside PLA #35 (1995), to a newspaper that called the harassment campaign a mutual “war of words”
- WHO
- Phone Losers of America (PLA) — founded 1994 by Brad Carter (“RedBoxChiliPepper” / “RBCP”) and “Zak” (el_jefe) FACT
- SCENE
- Phone-phreak zine culture — the comedic wing of the payphone/red-box/BBS underground, adjacent to but distinct from the intrusion crews (see Phiber Optik for the other end of that scene)
- THE DRAMA
- A parody hacking zine whose “cactus” and “loser list” files crossed from prank into documented harassment of private people — pizza bombs, fake classified ads, calling-card fraud — exposed by a 1995 newspaper investigation and, 20 years on, a federal case
- RECORD
- Carter sentenced Oct 16, 2017 (D. Ore., Judge Marco A. Hernandez) to 8 months’ home detention, 5 years’ probation, and $19,600 restitution to Safeway over a retail customer-data scheme ADJUDICATED
- STATUS
- ACTIVE — the zine ended in 1997; PLA lives on as The Snow Plow Show, a prank-call podcast still running in 2026
This file is not a takedown of a joke. PLA is, genuinely, one of the great sustained comedy projects of the phreak era — forty-six zine issues, a book, and a podcast that has outlasted the landline itself. The through-line is the seam where the bit stops being victimless: where “a list of numbers to call when you’re bored” is a real family’s phone, and the punchline is twenty voicemails and a classified ad in their name. The archive keeps both the funny part and the receipt.
the drama timeline
ACT I — THE ZINE (1994–1997)
Two guys, a BBS, and a masthead disclaimer that tells you exactly what kind of comedy this is going to be.
-
1994
“For Informational Purposes Only. We’re Not Responsible For Your Stupidity.”
Brad Carter (RBCP) and Zak launch the Phone Losers of America as a phone-phreak e-zine. The register is set from the first file: PLA #1, “How To Hack A WWIV BBS,” is a straight-faced parody instructing the reader to hack a bulletin board by climbing through the sysop’s window with an actual axe. It is not a hacking manual; it is a joke about hacking manuals. Over 1994–1997 the crew publishes 46 issues.
-
1994–95
Cactus
The zine’s signature bit: “cactus” — in RBCP’s own account, “to call up a person at random and say absolutely nothing to them except ‘cactus’.” Harmless as described, and mostly it was. But the same worldview produced PLA #7, a “list of numbers to call when you’re bored,” which PLA distributed on BBSes with the note that “harassment is optional.” The absurdist joke and the harassment engine shipped in the same zine.
ACT II — THE 618 FEUD AND THE FRONT PAGE (1995)
A BBS argument becomes a phone-directory listing becomes a front-page newspaper investigation into seven harassed families.
-
1994–95
“He dared us to do something horrible to him”
A user on a local (618-area-code) bulletin board feuds with the crew and, by PLA’s own telling, insults the board and “dared us to do something horrible to him.” PLA obliges: the target’s number goes onto the loser list, and a campaign follows — pizzas ordered to his workplace, fake classified ads placed in his name offering houses for rent and pets to give away. ATTRIBUTED The target and other private individuals are deliberately unnamed here.
-
SEP 3, 1995
“Metro-east Families Face Harassment By Hackers”
The Belleville News-Democrat runs a front-page investigation reporting that seven metro-east families were harassed — obscene calls, false telephone charges, and pranks — after running afoul of PLA, with victims named on a distributed file. RBCP reprints the whole article in PLA #35 and annotates it in brackets, disputing the reporter’s facts (“when in the hell did PLA become a hackers group???”) and bragging about screaming “NO COMMENT” down the phone at the reporter. The comedy and the harm are, by this point, the same document.
ACT III — FROM ZINE TO MICROPHONE (1997–2013)
The zine ends; the prank-call habit doesn’t. PLA becomes a broadcast.
-
2002–2006
PLA Radio
After the zine winds down in 1997, Carter keeps PLA alive online, launching PLA Radio as an internet station in 2002 and a podcast version in 2006 — prank calls, listener voicemails, and phone-world news, the zine’s sensibility ported to audio.
-
2012–13
The Snow Plow Show
After 29 episodes of PLA Radio, Carter starts The Snow Plow Show — briefly a YouTube video show in 2012, then, from 2013, a weekly audio prank-call podcast. It becomes PLA’s durable form and is still running in 2026.
ACT IV — THE FEDERAL CASE (2016–2017)
Two decades after the loser list, the joke about accessing other people’s accounts stops being a joke.
-
NOV 2016
The raid
Carter reports that the FBI raided his recording studio in an early-morning action and seized his equipment. The investigation centered on an effort to access customer profiles at retail chains across the country — primarily Safeway — some of which were used in prank calls.
-
OCT 16, 2017
Sentenced
In the Federal District Court of Oregon, Judge Marco A. Hernandez sentences Carter to eight months of home detention, five years of probation, and $19,600 in restitution to Safeway. The prank-call institution’s founder is, formally, a federal defendant — and pays it off.
both sides, on the record
Real people, not props: the “cactus” ethos is genuinely funny until it is a specific family’s phone. A newspaper documented seven harassed households in 1995; the pizzas, the fake ads, and the false charges were real, and the targets never signed up for the bit [2].
The record is the record: whatever the comedy framing, the 2016 investigation was federal, the customer-data scheme was real enough to draw a conviction, and a judge ordered restitution to Safeway. That is not satire; that is a docket [1].
It is, mostly, comedy: the bulk of the PLA corpus is parody — the axe-through-the-window “hacking” file, the absurdist “cactus” game, the mock disclaimers. PLA is a documented artifact of phreak-era humor, archived by textfiles.com and the Internet Archive and collected into a book [3].
PLA disputed the “hacker menace” frame: RBCP pushed back in print on being cast as a criminal “hackers group,” arguing the reporter built his whole picture out of a couple of joke files — “when in the hell did PLA become a hackers group???” The costly signal cuts for him too: thirty years of output, and the crew is a comedy podcast, not a fraud ring [4].
YOU DECIDE
PLA is two things at once and always has been: a real and durable piece of American prank-comedy folk art, and, in its cruelest files, a harassment machine pointed at private people who were guilty of nothing worse than annoying a teenager on a BBS. The zine is worth keeping. So is the front page of the Belleville News-Democrat, and the 2017 restitution order. You can love the bit and still notice who paid for it.
The archive does not deify. The archive keeps the funniest file — and the family that got the pizzas.
evidence locker
PRIMARY / REFERENCE
Wikipedia — Phone Losers of America ATTRIBUTED — founding (1994, Carter & Zak), the 46-issue zine run (1994–1997), PLA Radio, the Snow Plow Show, the Nov 2016 FBI raid, and the Oct 16, 2017 federal sentence (home detention, probation, $19,600 restitution to Safeway).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_Losers_of_America PLA #35 (1995) — RBCP’s annotated reprint PRIMARY — PLA’s own editorial voice: the “War of words, my ass” reply, the reprinted (Sep 3, 1995)
Belleville News-Democrat exposé, and RBCP’s first-person account of the origin of “cactus.” Victim data withheld here.
phonelosers.com/zine/pla035/ textfiles.com — the PLA zine archive PRIMARY — the mirrored run of PLA issues, the primary corpus of the crew’s comedic and harassment files.
textfiles.com/magazines/PLA/
CONTEXT & CROSS-LINKS
phonelosers.com — History of the Phone Losers of America ATTRIBUTED — PLA’s own history page: the zine years, the radio era, and the Snow Plow Show.
phonelosers.com/history/ The Snow Plow Show — About ATTRIBUTED — the current form of PLA: a weekly prank-call comedy podcast, active into 2026.
snowplowshow.com/about/
The standard. Brad Carter is a named, public figure — author, podcaster, and federal defendant — and the dates, the zine run, the raid, and the 2017 sentence are matters of public record. PLA’s own editorial voice is quoted from its own zine. The harm to private individuals is stated as documented fact, but every private target’s name, number, and address is deliberately withheld: the point of this file is the crew’s conduct and ethos, not a reprint of anyone’s dumped data. Nothing beyond the record is asserted. If a line here couldn’t survive scrutiny, it wouldn’t be on the page.