Melbourne man slapped with whopping $191,000 phone bill

A Melbourne man who was hit with a nasty phone bill of more than $190,000 after having his phone stolen has now been taken to court by his telco.

Kim Beveridge was slapped with a $191,456 bill after his phone was pick-pocketed outside a bar in Barcelona in February last year while attending an annual conference.

"I notified Telechoice the following evening which was about 20 hours after what we worked out was the event," Mr Beveridge told A Current Affair.

He received an email from Telechoice saying they had detected fraudulent activity and had suspended his account effective immediately.

But as Mr Beveridge later found out, a monstrous bill had already been accumulated within those 20 hours.

He claims there were a total of 4484 calls made with an average duration of 10 minutes within the 20 hour period before the account was disabled.

Mr Beveridge says there had to be an average of 38 simultaneous calls active the entire time, which he says was not possible for him to make from his mobile phone.

"Those calls were made fraudulently by a crime ring and an international crime ring, and they are trying to make me pay," Mr Beveridge claims.

Sim cards are highly sought after by fraudsters, used to make multiple calls to premium rate numbers, A Current Affair reports.

Telechoice have now taken Mr Beveridge to court demanding he pay the bill, but Mr Beveridge is refusing to do so.

"I am angry, I don't know how they can expect someone to pay this," he said.

Mr Beveridge's lawyer says they will fight the proceedings.

"Clearly all of these calls could not have been made from Kim's phone … Telechoice needs to get real about this," James Graham from Madgwicks told A Current Affair.