AUBURN – Phil Deletetsky says he never even knew his business had been slammed.

“The first call I got was from the PUC,” he said from work at Advanced Insulation.

Since then, though, he has learned that a Michigan-based outfit not only tried to rip him off with bogus telephone service charges, it also did so by using a phony tape that featured the voice of a woman claiming to be an Advanced Insulation official.

“Somebody did their job,” Deletetsky said of the state’s Public Utilities Commission. “It never affected our service.”

Helping matters, he said, could be the fact that he had put a freeze order on his telephone service with Verizon, his regular provider. The freeze prevents outfits like LCR Communications from doing what LCR had tried to do to Deletetsky and succeeded doing with more than 100 other Mainers.

The PUC announced Thursday that those Mainers have received credits worth more than $15,000 to offset LCR’s fraudulent long distance telephone charges.

The commission said those customers were hit with the phony charges after LCR slammed their long-distance services.

Slamming happens when someone’s telephone service is changed without the customer’s knowledge or consent. The PUC said it began getting complaints from customers about LCR in 2003. The PUC’s investigation determined that LCR failed to obtain customer authorization for its charges. Required proof in the form of third party verification tapes provided by LCR turned out to be bogus recordings of voices other than the customers, the PUC said.

Slamming violates both state and federal laws. The PUC has jurisdiction over local service and in-state toll service while the Federal Communications Commission handles slamming complaints involving out-of-state and international toll services.

The PUC said that besides helping customers get their accounts credited for the slammed service charges, it has notified the FCC of the fraudulent actions in Maine.

Deletetsky said he has since received a call from the FCC. He and some of his employees have filed affidavits for the federal agency that will be used in its prosecution of the Troy, Mich.-based LCR.