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The Gazette
Bilked Americans of $45 million
police:
Former VP of Manhattan bank office also collared by joint
task force
February 2, 2005
-- Montreal, PQ. -The former vice-president of a bank in Manhattan
was among more than two dozen people arrested as suspects
in a Montreal telemarketing ring alleged to have defrauded
Americans in financial trouble of more than $45 million.
Police officers in
a joint task force known as Project Colt swept down on two
"boiler rooms" yesterday morning and arrested 28 people, including
two Montrealers alleged to be the ringleaders.
Both men appeared in
Superior Court, where they learned they are wanted on provisional
warrants from the U.S. Attorney's office in New York. Not
all the evidence against Leslie Pinsky, 51, and Stephen Clark,
45, has been forwarded to Canadian authorities yet.
According to U.S.
court documents, the ring they are alleged to have operated
bilked more than 100,000 Americans out of millions of dollars
between December 2001 and July 2003.
The most common fraud
scheme used was to offer people a credit card with a guaranteed
$2,500 spending limit for a $300 fee. All the victims would
get in return were pamphlets or CDs with information on how
to consolidate debt or application forms for legitimate credit
cards.
Raymond Payne, a former
vice-president of an HSBC bank office in Manhattan, was arrested
last week as part of the Montreal telemarketing ring investigation.
"This is huge. There
are attorneys from North Carolina and from New York (involved).
The investigators have been working for 18 months," said Lt.
Michel Forget of the Surete du Quebec, one of the police forces
involved in Project Colt, which also includes the RCMP and
the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, among others.
Forget alleged Pinsky and Clark were
"the brains and the arms behind all the fraud."
A telemarketer who
worked in one of the operations in 2002 told investigators
Pinsky and Clark "were present virtually every day" in a boiler
room. The informant said telemarketers were given scripts
to use in their pitch to potential victims.
In addition to Pinsky
and Clark, 26 other people were arrested in Montreal. Most
were hauled out of boiler rooms police alleged were still
operating, one out of an office building on Decarie Blvd.
near Isabella Ave., the other on Queen Mary Rd.
Most of the 26 were
released on a promise to appear in court on a later date.
Unlike the alleged ringleaders, their cases are expected to
be heard in a Montreal court and will involve charges of conspiracy
and fraud.
"Those were all pitchers
and closers, all the structure that we see in a boiler room,"
Forget said of the people arrested.
Most fraudulent telemarketing
schemes target elderly people, but in this case the ring went
after people of all ages. The U.S. Attorney's office in New
York said those targeted were low-income earners with poor
credit.
Forget said the ring
probably represents only "one to two per cent of fraudulent
telemarketing" going on in Montreal, a city often referred
as the North American capital for such crime.
"The $45 million is
only a drop in the ocean," Forget said, adding other such
operations are under investigation.
This is not Pinsky's
first time before courts on a charge of fraudulent telemarketing.
In 1995, he was arrested in a scheme that defrauded Canadians
of $5 million.
Police say Pinsky was
convicted and was under a court order to not participate in
any form of telemarketing for 10 years.
Pinsky and Clark learned
in court they can make a request for bail while they go through
the extradition process.
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