A SPECIAL REPORT: FRAUD

SCAMALOT: Orange County is known as the boiler-room capital of the world, boiler-room being cop talk for a scam sold over the phone. But how the term got started is in disagreement. . . . Says postal inspector J.S. Vach: “Back in the early days, they would locate in the cheapest room in a building--adjacent to the boiler room.” . . . Some of Vach’s colleagues insist it’s because telemarketing scams are “boiling with activity.”