Malibu Man Gets 5 Years, Ordered to Pay Back Investors

A Malibu man convicted of bilking unwary investors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars over the telephone was sentenced Monday to five years in prison and ordered to pay restitution to his victims.

Brian J. Cullen, 40, has already directed investigators to assets that will enable them to pay investors about 83 cents on the dollar of the money they lost, but U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie said Cullen’s cooperation “doesn’t entitle him to a medal.”

“This money was stolen from these people, and it rightfully belongs to these people,” the judge said. “It amazes me with what ease and how gullible people seem to be to these kinds of schemes, and with what ease they part with large sums of money over the telephone to people they know nothing about.”

Phony Oil Well Deals

Cullen was convicted of defrauding investors throughout the nation of more than $495,000 through a variety of investment schemes, in many cases duping them into parting with their life savings to invest in phony oil well partnerships.

In one case, Cullen admitted selling overlapping “exclusive” distributorships on a new invention to help control narcotics and alcohol addiction, charging the would-be distributors for investing in the product without telling them others had been allotted the same sales territory.

According to Assistant U.S. Atty. David Katz, who prosecuted the case, a variety of witnesses reported that Cullen used photographs of the distributors as dart boards in his office, affixing labels like “sucker,” “dummy” and “you got (expletive deleted)” to the photos.

Cullen’s attorney, deputy federal public defender H. Dean Steward, said Cullen is now “riddled with guilt” over his exploits and is eager to make restitution.

One of the victims of the oil well scam, an elderly Louisiana widow who invested more than $100,000 of her savings after Cullen falsely assured her that he was with a major oil company, was present at Monday’s sentencing hearing.

“I really feel you’re obligated to do something when you know something is wrong, because there might be someone else concerned,” said the woman, Lorraine Anderson, 69, whose complaints to the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission are credited with launching the investigation into Cullen.

“He’s a marvelous salesman, and I believe he has a little modicum of goodness left in him,” Anderson said. “I hope he will benefit from this.”