Callers to Maine EBT Number Get Sex Hotline Instead

Maine's slogan is "The Way Life Should Be," but that probably wasn't meant to suggest that residents calling to check the balance of their state-sponsored benefits would be better off being patched through to a sex hotline instead. That's how some locals were redirected when they dialed the number misprinted on the back of some EBT cards to reach Maine's Department of Health and Human Services—and instead find themselves on "America's hottest talk line," a phone sex line for women, the Sun Journal reports. "I was like, 'Wow, I must have messed that number up somehow really bad," says a Lewiston dad who kept getting the sex line whenever he punched in the number. "I thought it was just hilarious."

It turns out the erroneous number is one digit off from the health department's number, and a department spokesman says the typo will be fixed on all new cards. An interesting (though perhaps not surprising) revelation the spokesman says they found as they looked into the error: The company behind the sex line appears to purposely seek out phone numbers that are close to government numbers "to take advantage of either consumers who misdial or an inadvertent error in publishing the number." (Florida Gov. Rick Scott once inadvertently promoted some sexytime.)