24 Arrested in Crackdown on Telephone Sales
Seven telephone “boiler room” operators and 17 employees were arrested Wednesday for violating California’s 4-month-old telephone solicitation law.
Investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Los Angeles Police Department and the state Department of Justice served warrants on three companies with offices in Carson, Los Angeles, Venice, Van Nuys and West Los Angeles.
It was the first time sales people were arrested under the law, which requires companies to register with the state.
The arrests were made at Copier Supply Center in Carson, five locations of the Thrifty Dollar Co. and at Starbright Enterprises in West Los Angeles, according to David Disco, head deputy of the district attorney’s major fraud unit.
Copier Supply sold office supplies. The other companies offered a variety of phony sweepstake prizes.
At the same time, Huntington Beach police arrested the owner of Panavision Film Corp. in the Orange County city for operating an unregistered telephone marketing company. Panavision offered customers Hawaiian vacations in exchange for purchasing $450 worth of film processing services.
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