Touch-Tone Terrorists

Touch-Tone Terrorists is a series of CDs featuring prank phone calls, released from 1998 to 2015.

About

The Touch-Tone Terrorists are actually one man, Pete Dzoghi, who also goes by the name RePete. He purchased a series of 1-800 numbers, including ones that were one digit different from actual customer service numbers for companies such as (apparently) UPS, an oil change business, an auto insurance "claims support line", a psychic hotline, a pen manufacturer, a bank, a department store, a phone company, and others. Using a Gentner SPH-3A telephone hybrid and a Yamaha SPX-90 electronic pitch transposer to alter his voice over the phone, he would take incoming calls from people who had misdialed the number and were under the assumption that they had dialed the right number. He created a series of ridiculous exaggerated characters, all of which were voiced by him.

Several Touch-Tone Terrorists calls were featured on Crank Yankers on Comedy Central and MTV2, most notably the Yankerville Parcel Service calls.

At one point UPS tried to stop the sale of the Touch-Tone Terrorists CDs through a series of letters demanding, among other things, that all inventory of Infestation Records' CDs be "delivered" to UPS lawyers "for destruction", because UPS believed that many of the TTT calls involved customers who thought they were speaking to UPS customer service representatives. Infestation Records refused to comply on the basis that the CDs are a protected parody and the calls were recorded legally. RePete consulted with several attorneys regarding various legal issues to make sure that what he was doing was within legal grounds. All subjects gave their permission to have their voices on the CDs, and were "paid well."

Pete Dzoghi was also a frequent guest on Howard Stern's radio show, once in person, but usually called upon to crank call Howard Stern staff and Wack Pack members, such as Crazy Alice and High Pitch Eric.