5 in Office Supply Operation Plead Guilty in Multimillion-Dollar Fraud

Five employees of what prosecutors called one of the largest fraudulent office supply telemarketing operations in the country pleaded guilty Friday in Los Angeles federal court to fraud charges.

The owner of the operation, Sheldon Block, 36, of Malibu, and two other employees have pleaded innocent and are scheduled to be tried in federal court next week on fraud and racketeering charges.

When Block and his employees were indicted in February, prosecutors said his firm, Park Distributing Inc., grossed $36 million from 1981-85 through fraudulent telephone sales of office and copier supplies from its offices in Los Angeles, Culver City, San Diego and Phoenix.

Block was freed on $1-million bail in February after posting two Malibu homes and a third house in Westlake Village as security.

Pleading guilty Friday before U.S. District Judge Andrew Hauk were Park’s general manager, Steven Yatomi, 30, of Sylmar, in addition to salespeople Stuart Schechter, 30, Hollywood, and Emanuel Schechter, 57; Barbara Kieserman, 57, and James Baca, 46, all of Los Angeles.

The defendants face up to five years in prison.

Scheduled to stand trial with Block are Douglas Parsons, 25, of Gardena, and Chester Hultberg, 39, of El Cajon.

Including 11 other Park employees indicted in 1985, a total of 21 defendants have so far pleaded guilty in the case.

The indictments said Park salespeople called businesses at random and posed as representatives of the firms’ regular copier suppliers. Employees with the victimized companies were persuaded with high-pressure sales tactics to order large amounts of copier supplies that were either overpriced or never delivered.

Assistant U.S. Atty. David Katz said Park was at one time the largest illegal telemarketing operation dealing in office supplies in the United States.

The operation produced more than 2,000 written complaints to postal inspectors between 1981-85, the indictment said.