Make Money

Apparently pay-phone owners make money when certain toll-free numbers are called. So this guy programmed his phones to repeatedly call the numbers. Similar to robo-clicking on blog sites, only a little more direct. And more lucrative. Pay phones are a dying business, but Mr. Kantartzis seems to have found a way to revive them. Temporarily. From the Associated Press, via the Daily Record :  Nicolaos Kantartzis pleaded guilty in September to using more than 100 pay phones to make phantom calls to toll-free numbers, some 8 million calls in all. Because the calls are free to legitimate users, the party getting the call must pay costs that include a cut for the pay phone operator.

Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposal to require handgun licenses would make the state more than twice as much as it would cost to administer the program, according to a Department of Legislative Services analysis released Monday night. The analysis is the first independent look the costs of licensing, which advocates call the most effective and the most controversial piece of O'Malley's sweeping gun proposal.  Requiring a license to buy a handgun in Maryland would generate $3.8 million for Maryland in its first year, after the Maryland State Police hires 22 people to help implement the program.

All Frederick E. Bouchat says he wanted years ago was recognition for his idea for the Ravens team logo. Since the South Baltimore resident first sketched a flying raven clutching a shield with a "B" and faxed it to the Maryland Stadium Authority 16 years ago, he has won a court case crediting him with creating the Baltimore Ravens' first logo. But he has never been compensated. Bouchat's long-running dispute with the Ravens took a new turn last week when he accused the franchise of another copyright infringement, this time because it appears in photos displayed at M&T Bank Stadium.

THERE ARE plenty of reasons to resent Andrew Segal. He's successful, the owner of one of the fastest-growing private commercial real estate companies in the nation.He's getting rich: Segal's Boxer Property rakes in $40 million a year in rents.He is largely self-made, having parlayed, in just six years, a single Dallas office building into a portfolio of more than 60 projects in four states.He's just 31 years old. He is charming and persuasive, too.Segal is also a newlywed, as of yesterday.

Anne Arundel County's water has won awards in tasting competitions for years, and now it's being viewed for its potential to boost county revenues. County Councilman John Grasso, a Glen Burnie Republican, has proposed bottling and selling the water. "Parks, schools, all the county contracts [with vendors] that have anything to do with county government will be required to have county water in there," he says. "I am going to promote Anne Arundel County. Why shouldn't we make money, bring in some revenues?"

TAKING A PAGE from Art Modell's checkbook, I have decided to name my two children after the highest corporate bidder. OK, they already have names. But so did Ravens stadium, at least sort of. That didn't stop Modell from renaming it PSINet Stadium for a cool $105.5 million.Anyway, my two children do not respond to the names they have, so I plan to make some fast cash on new names to which they could also fail to respond.Everybody is doing it. Everyone with a stadium, that is. Team owners are getting millions.

It's difficult to know whether to be more insulted or admiring of Penn National Gaming's latest effort to milk the residents of Maryland (and perhaps some surrounding states) for all they are worth. For sheer chutzpah, it's hard to beat a company that releases not one but two consultants' studies revealing that turning Rosecroft Raceway into a massive casino could be extremely profitable for - drum roll, please - - Penn National Gaming. Well, duh. Was there some doubt lingering in the public's mind that installing thousands of slot machines as well as possible table games in a brand-new facility in the Washington suburbs might generate much in the way of jobs or revenue?

PRESUMABLY, most investors have a conscience.But if that's the case, then why don't more people feel troubled after making bundles of money off of companies that manufacture bombs, dump toxins into waterways or use child laborers to produce their products?That's what Steve Schueth, president of Calvert Distributors Inc., wants to know.His company underwrites and distributes seven mutual funds run by Calvert Group. The Bethesda-based Calvert Group operates the nation's largest family of mutual funds that invest in "socially responsible" businesses.

Three mainstream movies opened in Baltimore last Friday -- "Basic Instinct" (Tri-Star), "Shadows & Fog" (Orion) and "Company Business" (MGM) -- and they had two things in common.The first was that, by one of those meaningless coincidences that make the world so interesting, each features a minor actor named Daniel Von Bargen -- he's an internal affairs officer in "Basic Instinct," a vigilante in "Shadows & Fog" and a CIA station chief in "Company Business." Von Bargen is very good in each of them, a brusque, tough-looking authority figure, who may have a career as a character actor ahead of him. Welcome to the movies, Mr. Van Bargen.

The former bottling plant in the Abell neighborhood has been all but abandoned for years. The Beverage Capital Corp. sign outside has faded. The white office walls have yellowed. A nearby mechanic uses the space that used to hold the bottling line as a parking lot. But when J. Hollis Albert tours the cavernous 48,000-square-foot facility, he imagines new life inside - brewers tinkering with formulas, bubbling fermentation tanks, beer bottles being filled and capped. Albert and Stephen Demczuk, owner of microbrewery Baltimore-Washington Beer Works, are in the final stages of opening Peabody Heights Brewery, which would be the city's first large-scale brewery in more than 30 years.