AT&T Won't Make Ipswich Man Pay $1.15 Million Bill

AT&T Won’t Make Business Owner Pay Fraudulent $1.15 Million Phone Bill. In move of uncharted good nature and plain common sense, AT&T dropped a lawsuit against Michael Smith, of Ipswich, who says his business phone line racked up $900,000 in calls to Somalia after being hacked. AT&T initially sued Smith for the calls plus interest, because we all know that small-business owners in manufacturing really spend the majority of their time on the phone with Africa.  [WCVB]

Bobby Valentine Says the Dominican Republic Is the Problem, Not MLB. Bobby V’s involvement as producer of “Ballplayer: Pelotero” has been making waves locally (surprise, surprise). Elsewhere, though, it’s the bigger picture of scouting star baseball players from the Dominican Republic — stars like David Ortiz, who got a $10,000 bonus upon signing his first MLB contract in 1992, the same year Derek Jeter signed with the Yankees for $800,000 and Jeffrey Hammonds (who?) signed with the Orioles for a $975,000 bonus. “I don’t think the issue is with Major League Baseball,” Valentine told the LA Times. “They’ve made great strides in reforming the system. What’s questionable in one country isn’t in another. What you see is the way people have done business there for years.”  [LA Times]

Meet the U.S. Olympians Who Hail From New England. As we near the games, a primer on the Olympians who call (or have called) New England home.  [Boston.com]

Vornado Realty Sells Boston Design Center. The group that brought you the delay in filling the hole in Downtown Crossing has sold the Design Center, which it bought for $96 million in 2005, as well as the Washington Design Center in D.C., the L.A. Mart, and the Canadian Trade Shows.  [Boston Business Journal]

Whitey Bulger’s Lawyer Says He May Call Judge as Witness. J.W. Carney Jr. filed last month to have Judge Richard Stearns, a top federal prosecutor during the time when Bulger is accused of committing crimes, removed from the case.  [WBUR]