Telemarketing Fraud
Canadian Co-Leader of $30 Million Telemarketing Fraud Pleads Guilty according to a press release by the Department of Homeland Security, which said in part:
"Stephan Clark, a Canadian citizen who was the co-owner of a company in Montreal that engaged in a massive telemarketing fraud, pled guilty in Manhattan federal court today to two separate conspiracy counts stemming from his role in the scheme, which targeted approximately 100,000 of U.S. victims between early 2002 and late 2003.
According to a superseding indictment (the "Indictment") against Clark and co-defendants Leslie Pinsky and Raymond Payne, earlier criminal complaints in the case (the "Complaints"), and Clark's statements in his guilty plea, CLARK and PINSKY ran First Choice Tele-Services Corporation ("First Choice").
First Choice employed telemarketers who made unsolicited "cold-calls" to low income U.S. residents with poor credit. In those calls, First Choice offered U.S. residents "guaranteed" credit cards - for a fee that ranged from $249 to $299. First Choice telemarketers working for Pinsky and Clark also obtained the victims' bank account information, which First Choice used to initiate transfers of funds from the victims' bank accounts to an account First Choice held at HSBC Bank ("HSBC") in Manhattan." (my emphasis)
Naturally, in this advance fee scam, nobody got a credit card.
This type of telemarketing is generally easy to protect oneself against - get a ten dollar answering machine and don't answer your phone. Screening is not only good manners, it should be the law of the truly due diligent.
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