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State agency typo sends callers to party line hawking adult hotlines

Scientist William C. Campbell talks on the phone at his home in North Andover, Mass., Monday, Oct. 5, 2015. Campbell is one of three scientists from the U.S., Japan and China who won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discovering drugs to fight malaria and other tropical diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people every year.
Scientist William C. Campbell talks on the phone at his home in North Andover, Mass., Monday, Oct. 5, 2015. Campbell is one of three scientists from the U.S., Japan and China who won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for discovering drugs to fight malaria and other tropical diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people every year.

By Associated Press 1 min read

BOSTON – The words “free” and “fun” are not the first things that come to mind when talking about the Massachusetts Department of Administration and Finance.

Yet a typo in a phone number on a news release issued by the agency Wednesday sent media inquiries to a “free and fun party line” advertising adult hotlines.

The Boston Herald reports that the release declaring October as Cyber Security Awareness Month mistakenly substituted area code “617” instead of “857” in a spokesman’s number.

Department chief of staff Dominick Ianno says the error was an obvious typo since “nothing is free and fun in the Executive Office for Administration and Finance.”

The mistake was quickly corrected.