When does prank calling stop being funny? The Jerky Boys might say when the royalties stop, and their fans might say "at age 12." But for one Inwood couple, the thrill has been gone for almost two years. Mamadou and Assetou Sy have had 155 visits from the NYPD and the FDNY on fake calls, sometimes twice a day. "We cannot understand how this could be happening," Mamadou tells the Daily News, "How can people play around with the Fire Department and the police like this?" Moe is one thing, but continually calling emergencies services is just wrong. more ›

Remember Manuel "Manny" Lopez, the retired police sergeant who was charged with placing at least 21 prank phone calls to people like Rudy Giuliani and Ray Kelly while pretending to be Kelly's personal aide, a Citibank officer and a New York Post editor? Well, he's pleaded guilty to the crime and was recently sentenced to pay up $8,000 to the NYPD and do 50 hours of community service. more ›

A former aide to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has been charged in Manhattan Criminal Court with impersonating a top NYPD officer and others in dozens of prank calls to NYPD brass and politicians, including America's Mayor Rudy Giuliani. According to the charges 55-year-old Manuel "Manny" Lopez posed as Chief Michael Shea in at least 21 phone calls which the retired sergeant admitted to prosecutors "started out as a joke and thereafter became an obsession." more ›

Medics are claiming that they may have been able to save people like a 75-year-old Queens mother who died during the storm had the 911 lines not been clogged with prank or just plain stupid phone calls. EMS units claim one man called complaining of a stomach ache, but later admitted that he had eaten a whole pizza about 20 minutes earlier. Other units responded to a call of a sick child in Brooklyn only to find that his parents were just hoping EMTs could make him finish his homework. more ›

A real-life man who cried wolf pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges that he prank called 911 more than 330 times over a 20 month period. Anthony Lloyd, 49, faces a 28-count indictment of making false bomb and anthrax reports against a city Human Resources Administration building in Harlem. And Lloyd was only caught after he made an actual legitimate call to 911 last month. more ›

After finding himself starved for conversation, a Suffolk County man went on to make nearly 300 fake 911 calls, ranging from claims of car accidents to murders. The perp used a falsetto voice and pretended to be a woman— and more than once he identified himself as THE Christopher Columbus. more ›

A 20-year-old in Park Slope was picked up by police and arrested for making a false report after placing four prank calls to 911 last week. What was the hilarious line that he was trying to get cops to believe? That one of their fellow officers had been shot in the head, even giving the badge number of the "wounded" officer. Police would go to each of the locations where the supposed shootings was, only to find nothing, and contact the officer, who was all right. Investigators ultimately recognized the voice of Daquan Gardner, who was arrested for a similar call in 2007. Just two weeks ago, Gardner had been arrested for smoking marijuana at Sixth Avenue and Fourth Street, the same area he was placing the calls from on a street pay phone. An investigator told the Post, "He got locked up, he was mad at the police and he was trying to cause trouble." One of the calls last week was placed just hours before Officer Omar Edwards was fatally shot in East Harlem. more ›

After initially being charged with reckless endangerment as a hate crime, a Staten Island man will only face misdemeanor charges for calling 911 last week with multiple false claims of attacking Mexicans. 44-year-old Michael Franklin was arrested after calling 911 on 5 separate occasions and saying things such as that he "killed two Mexicans and will kill more," that he "is riding around all day looking for more Mexicans" and that he "just hit a Mexican in the head with a baseball bat and threw him in the weeds." A spokesman for the DA's office says that the original hate crime charges were downgraded because the calls don't fall under the state's list of specified offenses for a hate crime. Franklin's only charges now will be for third-degree falsely reporting an incident and second-degree obstruction of governmental administration. After being arrested, he allegedly told police, "I'm an American citizen. The Mexicans are here illegally. They get work. I don't get work." more ›

The NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating allegations that just hours after the not guilty verdict was issued in the Sean Bell shooting trial, a number of crank calls were made to the home of Nicole Paultre Bell's parents by someone connected to a police union. The calls were both hang-ups or someone laughing--"Ha ha ha"--on the other end of the line. more ›