Las Vegas Call Center Owner Charged After Fraud, Feds Reveal
A adult male who operated a telemarketing phone nerve centre located inward Las Vegas was indicted of late followers a federal inquiry into fraudulent fundraising operations.
Richard Zeitlin, 53, of Las Vegas, was apprehended at his nursing home on Th past federal agents, according to Las Vegas TV place KLAS.
He later was supercharged with a matter of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connectedness with telemarketing, and a counting of conducting wire humbug in connectedness with telemarketing, according to Damian Williams, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. He was also supercharged with conspiracy to embarrass justice and impedimenta of justice.
Also arrested was Robert Piaro, 73, of Wisconsin, the financial officer of iv political process committees (PACs). He was charged with a weigh of wire hoax and a depend of send fraud.
Prosecutors lay claim that Piaro raised more than $28M from hundreds of thousands of donors.
“Richard Zeitlin and Robert Piaro lied to donors who thought they were giving to groups that were serving veterans, aiding law of nature enforcement officers, and fighting tit cancer,” Tennessee Williams said inwards a statement.
This isn’t the first off rodeo for Zeitlin. In 2021, donors filed a class process lawsuit in PA against Zeitlin followers the give up of a describe from the Center for Public Integrity. The case claims Zeitlin and his businesses violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by “siphoning … donations out inward the variant of tremendous profits.”
Misleading Donors
Between 2017 and 2020, Zeitlin’s telecommerce call centers, identified as the Zeitlin Call Centers, allegedly defrauded donors “by providing misleading and mistaken info almost how the donors’ money would follow spent and the nature of the organizations to which they were giving,” the statement revealed.
According to Willians, send for centre workers changed telephone scripts and misled donors to believe they would throw to a charity kind of than a PAC.
The PACs included Americans for the Cure of Breast Cancer, the Association for Emergency Responders & Firefighters, the U.S. Veterans Assistance Foundation, and Standing By Veterans.
The Zeitlin Call Centers make raised hundreds of millions of dollars for charities and PACs. Zeitlin entities kept a “substantial percentage” of the funds raised past the telephone call center, typically almost 90%, prosecutors added. The remaining monetary resource went to the charity or PAC.
Prosecutors also claimed that after May 2022, Zeitlin told an employee to instruct other workers to delete electronic messages at the business. Zeitlin told his futurity clients to run PACs instead than charities because of less-restrictive regulations, the indictment farther revealed.
If convicted, for each one look has a maximum sentence of either 20 years or 30 years inward prison.
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