Craven Voice on Other End of Mysterious Phone Calls

(ATR) A person attempting to pose as former International Paralympic Committee President Philip Craven contacted multiple people ahead of the IOC decision to suspend the Russian Olympic Committee.

Around the Rings confirmed that German journalist Hajo Seppelt and the offices of the International Paralympic Committee received phone calls. IPC communications director Craig Spence then attempted to call the London-based number.

Spence told ATR that the IPC received a phone call at one of its desks from the number asking to speak with Phil Craven. Spence then verified the number with Seppelt and attempted to make contact. Spence reached the number asking to speak with Craven, but an "Eastern European," man rebuffed him.

A little while later the number called Spence back as he sat in a room with Craven and current IPC President Andrew Parsons. The voice on the other end of the number was in fact Craven's, much to the surprise of the group.

"That’s my voice!" Craven said according to Spence.

Spence then attempted to have a conversation with the voice on the other end of the line. After any question was posed to the voice there would be a slight delay before an answer came back. Spence speculated that this could be explained by someone using a computer to fabricate responses in Craven’s voice.

The voice on the other end of the line was fooled when Spence asked the fake Craven what time it was. Instead of answering the voice hastily said goodbye before hanging up. Spence said this is because "[Craven] doesn’t usually talk about numbers".

The number originally called Seppelt "asking ‘for a comment from me’ about the situation regarding Russia". Seppelt was in Lausanne reporting on the IOC Executive Board decision to suspend the Russian Olympic Committee and bar athletes from competing at PyeongChang under their own flag.

"It looked for me like an obvious try to provoke a statement from my side which they would try to use in a context to discredit me," Seppelt said to ATR.

Craven was not the only voice impersonated yesterday in phone calls. Seppelt says he received word that at least one official had received a mysterious phone call using his voice.

ATR Tries to Make Contact

ATR tried multiple attempts on different devices to make contact with the callers.

On the first attempt, someone answered ATR’s call, but asked "where are you from," when asked if we could speak to Craven. All further attempts to make contact resulted in the call going straight to voicemail. ATR could not verify which language the London-based number’s voicemail was, but Spence said he believes it is Russian.

A voicemail was left for the number using a different phone and asking the caller to reach the ATR office to answer some questions we had about who owned the number.

Soon after, the cell phone used to contact the number received three missed calls. The calls were from a German number, which were quickly returned. A receptionist at the IPC picked up the returned phone call.

"The numbers [for the missed calls] are IPC and are the numbers we called the Russian on yesterday," Spence said. "No one from the IPC called [Around the Rings]."

The information was then relayed to German authorities. It remains unclear who in London was behind the phone calls, as all subsequent attempts to contact the number have failed.

ATR attempted to recreate the situation using a mobile app called "SpoofCard." The app allows users to pay for credits in which it would mask the phone number used to call another cell phone. A free trial of the app proved successful to call another cell phone posing as the IPC’s reception desk.

Spence said he speculates that the stunt was similar to one that rocked the IPC in October 2016. Russian pranksters successfully goaded then-President Craven into criticizing the IOC for its perceived half-measures against Russia before the 2016 Olympics.

Pranksters posed as United States Anti Doping chairman Edwin Moses when calling Craven. Russia was barred from participating in the Rio 2016 Paralympics by the IPC. A decision on the status of the Russian Paralympic team in PyeongChang will come on Dec. 19.

Written by Aaron Bauer

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