those guys were not that stupid that they did not know there will be abuse of their humanitarian service. they evaluated it before hand, that's why it took few days before the final decision was made. John J Legree said " we will compensate about 20 abuse of this service for every single call made by actual victim" which covers the whole abuse.
p.s : I am on AT&T for last 5 years. T-mobile network sucked in my area. and that quote does not have source.