October 29. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota announced on Wednesday (28th) that the authorities have charged 60 people with participating in a widespread magazine telemarketing scam that has collected more than 150,000 elderly and disadvantaged people in the United States. Profit 300 million US dollars.
According to ABC News, U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald called the scam the country’s largest fraud case against senior citizens in recent years.
According to the authorities, the 60 defendants face a series of charges, including conspiracy/mail fraud, wire fraud, and violations of the 1994 Anti-Marketing Scams Against Seniors Act. The defendants came from 14 states in the United States and two provinces in Canada.
The indictment and other court documents point out that in the past 20 years, the defendant has used dozens of fraudulent magazine sales companies and telemarketing call centers to commit fraud. Allegedly, employees used deceptive sales scripts to trick people into paying large sums of money or repeat payments to the company.
The indictment alleges that many defendants used fraudulent “renewal” scripts, in which telemarketers falsely claimed to be calling from the victim’s existing magazine subscription company and provided false quotations to reduce monthly subscription fees.
The FBI’s special agent in Minneapolis said: “These deceptive scammers use the sales strategy of telemarketing magazines to earn hard money from the elderly victims, causing many people to fall into financial crisis in their retirement years. Get help.”
Some defendants have also been accused of using “cancel” scripts against previous victims. According to the indictment, these defendants took advantage of the victim’s desire to stop the subscription and proposed to merge and cancel the existing subscription business in order to repay the so-called “outstanding balance” in exchange for large sums of money. In fact, the victim did not owe fees.
The indictment charged all defendants suspected of conspiracy, including those who allegedly led the plan, company owners, call center managers, telemarketers, etc.
The person leading the program provided the company’s software program that can track orders, sales staff, and other customer information. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said these fraudulent companies have operations in 14 states including Minnesota, Florida, and Georgia.
