Pompano Beach Club became the first casualty of legislation designed to curb the operation of call-back companies in Bermuda.

In Magistrates' Court yesterday, acting Magistrate Justin Williams fined the hotel $10,000 after it pleaded guilty to possessing and maintaining unlicensed telecommunications equipment, which it used to initiate 3,000 call-backs between December 21 and 28, 2000 - less than a week after legislation prohibiting the provision of call-back was enacted.

The hotel was hosting equipment for GlobalTel, the rogue telecommunications company known for its aggressive courtship of Bermuda customers.

GlobalTel reportedly had a representative in Bermuda who set up the equipment, but he fled the Island before Police received a tip about the operation on December 28. That evening, they raided the hotel, and found several pieces of electronic equipment, including a computer connected to the Internet and an antenna.

Crown counsel Graveney Bannister explained that GlobalTel had rented two pager numbers from Telecom under the names of Kaweske and Wei Huang. To trigger a call-back, customers with GlobalTel accounts dialled these pager numbers and entered access codes. The signals were intercepted by scanning equipment at Pompano, and call-backs were triggered via GlobalTel's website.

A statement from Logic Communications, Pompano's Internet service provider, confirmed that the hotel was sending data to GlobalTel's computers in the United States. When investigators examined the computer, they discovered a relationship between the pager access numbers and transmissions to GlobalTel.

When he was questioned on January 5 last year, the hotel's general manager, Lawrence Elliott Lamb, told Police that he had agreed to receive equipment to be installed by a GlobalTel representative.

Mr. Lambe was originally charged with the offence, and in September he pleaded not guilty to the charges. Prosecutors subsequently agreed to defence requests to charge the hotel with the offence instead of its employee. Mr. Lamb is still the hotel's general manager.

The anti-call-back legislation provides for a fine as high as $50,000. Under the old legislation, drawn in 1986, magistrates and judges could only impose fines as high as $2,000 for telecommunications offences.

Before sentencing, defence lawyer Allan Dunch said that Pompano was not aware of the legislation, which had only recently been enacted at the time. He also said the hotel had not profited from the call-back operation and Mr. Bannister could not offer any evidence that it had. In a telephone interview last night, Mr. Bannister said it was possible that Pompano was never paid to host the equipment or received a commission on the calls because the set-up only lasted a week.