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Re: Please report upfront fee scammers to Attorney General ..... there's power in numbers (by R P.):
EAST ST. LOUIS • Ralph Johnson, 34, of Delray Beach, Fla., was sentenced Friday in federal court here to 46 months in prison for his role in a telemarketing scam that cost more than 22,000 people — including at least 54 from Southern Illinois — about $30 million, prosecutors said. Johnson is one of a handful of participants in the scene, which ran from 2007-2010 and involved cold-calling timeshare owners and pretending to have willing buyers.
They asked for several thousand dollars in closing costs from victims in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Canada. Johnson participated in 2009, when he was a telemarketer for Universal Marketing Solutions and Creative Vacation Solutions. He scammed more than $282,000 from 141 victims, prosecutors said. Johnson pleaded guilty Sept. 8 to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud.
Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/man-gets-gets-months-in-scam-that-fleeced-thousands-including/article_0f03e0ee-2840-11e1-99cd-0019bb30f31a.html#ixzz1h67unwUc