Hey listeners, this is Mike Morford, one of the producers has seen in the crime,

and I just started a new series from Wondry and Topic Studios called Operator,

the untold true story of the phone sex line company that took over the world.

In the 1990s, ads for phone sex lines could be seen everywhere, flickering on late night cable

channels, and printed on the back of magazines, while phone sex operators worked around the clock

to fulfill fantasies. It all started with an idea from Mike Pardez, CEO and founder of American

Telnet, who proudly coined himself the telephone pimpe. He was joined by tech genius and partner

Michael Self, who was known as the Bill Gates of Phone Sex, but it was the women behind the

phones who created the close knit yet dysfunctional family that turned American Telnet into a

multi-billion dollar company and revolutionized the sex industry. As fortunes grew,

the founders were selling lavish yachts, feeling wild drug parties, and burning through cash by the

minute, and the FTC was watching their every move. Wondry and Topic Studios new podcast Operator

is the untold story of a company which dominated the phone sex industry until the money blinded

them, and it all came crashing down. I'm going to play a brief preview of Operator and introduce

you to the heart of Victoria, but while you're listening, make sure to follow Operator on Apple

Podcast, Amazon Music, or you can listen early and add free by subscribing to Wondry Plus,

an Apple Podcast, or the Wondry app.

I got a call about two o'clock in the morning from one of the male supervisors and he says

there are a bunch of men with guns on the property, and we don't know what to do. Victoria had

been working in American telnet for several years. She'd seen her share of emergencies, so she

shouldn't freak out right away. And I said, okay, are they police? He says, I really don't know,

they're playing clothes. I said, playing clothes suits, or he goes, no jeans. He goes, I said,

...