 |
| Photo: photo courtesy of pixabay.com |
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Sixty people have been charged in a widespread magazine telemarketing scam that authorities say netted $300 million from more than 150,000 elderly and vulnerable people nationwide, the U.S. attorney’s office in Minnesota announced Wednesday.
U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald called the scam the largest elder fraud scheme in the country.
MacDonald
said the 60 defendants face a host of charges, including conspiracy,
mail fraud, wire fraud, and violating the Senior Citizens Against
Marketing Scams Act of 1994. The defendants are from 14 states and two
Canadian provinces.
“Unfortunately, we live in a world where
fraudsters are willing to take advantage of seniors, who are often
trusting and polite. It’s my hope that this prosecution is a call for
vigilance and caution,” MacDonald said in a statement.
The
indictments and other court documents say that over the last 20 years,
the defendants used a network of dozens of fraudulent magazine sales
companies and telemarketing call centers to carry out the scam.
Employees allegedly used deceptive sales scripts to trick people into
making large or repeat payments to the companies.
The
indictments allege that many of the defendants used a fraudulent
“renewal” script in which the telemarketers falsely claimed to be
calling from the victim’s existing magazine subscription company with a
phony offer to reduce monthly subscription costs.
In reality,
the callers had no existing relationship with victims and signed them up
for expensive, new magazine subscriptions. As a result, consumers ended
up having multiple subscriptions with fraudulent magazine companies.
“Using
a tactic like telemarketing magazine sales, these deceitful scam
artists bilk hard earned money from their aging victims - leaving so
many financially devastated in their retirement years and without
recourse for recovery,” Michael Paul, the FBI’s special agent in charge
in Minneapolis, said.
Some of the defendants are also accused
of using a “cancellation” script that targeted people who had been
previous victims. According to the indictments, these defendants took
advantage of victims’ desperation to make the subscriptions stop and
offered to consolidate and cancel existing subscriptions and pay off an
alleged “outstanding balance” in exchange for a large lump sum payment.
In reality, victims owed no money.
The indictments charge
defendants at all levels of the alleged conspiracies, including people
who allegedly led the scheme, company owners, call center managers,
telemarketers and others. Those who led the scheme provided the
companies software programs that tracked orders, sales, and other
customer information.
The U.S. attorney’s office says the fraudulent companies were operating in Minnesota, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, California, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Arkansas.
No comments:
Post a Comment