Later, the service said, the number of apparent hoax calls prompted additional efforts to determine more specifically where the calls were coming from. At first, the Coast Guard said, monitoring equipment could indicate only that the calls came from somewhere along a line. The service said the caller has made 28 “hoax calls” since July 2014. In a statement released Friday, the Coast Guard estimated that the cost of searches prompted by the hoax calls has amounted to about US$500,000. But someone in the Washington D.C. region, the Coast Guard says, has been sending distress calls for the past two years for emergencies that did not exist.

Source: National Post July 25, 2016 14:03 UTC