From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The Ralphagized

Two of the crank caller's victims recall how they fell for the oldest trick in the phone book.

by Colleen Dougher

June 19 2007

Miami rapper Garcia knew Ralphige was out to prank him, so he didn't fall for the first crank call. But soon after that failed attempt, a woman began calling Garcia, pretending to be a stalker. Garcia took the bait and Ralphige struck, posing as the woman's angry boyfriend.

"I usually don't pick up numbers that I don't recognize," Garcia says. "But they called me so many times, I thought it might be somebody that's in trouble, calling from a different phone number. He was relentless. He must have called me, like, 100 million times."

Ralphige let Garcia have it. "He was yelling and screaming at me that I was messing with his girl," the rapper recalls. "And I'm yelling back at him. He totally had me going. Then, when it started getting to the point where he was like, 'Yeah, I killed her, and you've got to help me bury and hide the body,' right there, I knew, like, 'C'mon, man; give me a break.' "

Garcia figured the caller was a friend who had gotten really drunk or high until he heard him say, "It's Ralphige. Gotcha, bitch." Garcia took it well.

"I'll tell you one thing:" he says, "His tapes get around. Everywhere I've gone after that, someone brings that tape up."

Garcia hopes Ralphige will prank him again. "I got an album [Life Unscripted] coming out July 17, so it's like, 'Prank me in,' " he says, laughing. "He's a cool guy. I don't know what he looks like, but if you got a picture of him, that would be really cool. That's this whole thing. No one knows what he looks like."

Abebe Lewis, the CEO of Circle House Studios in Miami, didn't find out Ralphige had pranked him until long after the call had ended. Ralphige phone him to inquire about booking time at his studio and then proceeded to rag on Circle House. This sent Lewis into a rage.

"He just caught me off-guard," Lewis remembers. "He got me. I'm not going to lie to you. I was cursing him out. He was pushing my buttons, telling me my studio sucked."

Lewis didn't realize the 12-minute phone call was a prank until he read comments Ralphige had posted on 305hiphop.com. The crank caller's true identity continues to elude him.

"He sounds Mexican, then he sounds black, then he sounds white," Lewis says. "He's real good. Whatever he does, he's real good."

Lewis says he wasn't upset to find he'd been had but felt honored. "He only pranks real celebrities," he says. "I felt like a celebrity, you know?"