Your number’s up

In what sounds like the plot of a horror movie, a Bulgarian cellphone company has reportedly suspended the number 0888-888-888 after every single person who was assigned to it in the last 10 years died.

A spokesperson for Bulgarian firm MobilTel refused to comment, telling the Telegraphthat they don’t discuss individual numbers. But the newspaper tracked down the phone number’s eerie history and discovered that each owner had met an untimely end.

The first owner was the former MobilTel CEO, Vladimir Grashnov. In 2001, the 48-year-old died of cancer, although some speculated that he was radioactively poisoned by a business rival.

The number was then passed on to Konstantin Dimitrov, a Bulgarian mafia boss and owner of a $775-million drug smuggling empire. He was shot by a lone assassin in 2003 while eating out with a model in the Netherlands. He was 31.

The third and final owner was Konstantin Dishliev, a real-estate-agent-by-day and a drug-lord-by-night, who secretly ran a massive cocaine trafficking ring. In 2005, after police intercepted $200-million of the white stuff on its way in from Columbia, Mr. Dishliev was assassinated outside a restaurant in Bulgaria’s capital city.

After being temporarily suspended during the investigation into Mr. Dishliev’s death, the number is said to have been de-activated for good. Now anyone who calls is greeted with a recorded message saying the phone is “outside network coverage.”

So are the deaths merely coincidence or proof of a cell phone curse?

Whatever the case, MobilTel could stand to profit off the number by selling it to someone in China, where the number eight is considered lucky. In 2003, a Chinese airline paid 2.33-million yuan (US$280,723) for the phone number 8888-8888.