D.A. Goes After Mail Order Firm’s Owner for Second Time in 2 Years

For the second time in two years, the Orange County district attorney’s office went to court to corral an Irvine man’s allegedly fraudulent mail-order catalogue business activities.

The first time, in 1987, the target had been Tom Allen McKinley’s company, Exeters, which sold high-tech gadgetry. The second time, on Friday, the district attorney’s office went after his next generation of mail-order catalogue, called Ryans by Mail.

At the request of the consumer and environmental protection unit of the district attorney’s office, Superior Court Commissioner Julian Cimbaluk issued a temporary restraining order freezing the bank account of Ryans by Mail, Deputy Dist. Atty. Gay Geiser-Sandoval said.

The order will hold until Nov. 2, when another hearing is scheduled on whether it should be extended until McKinley’s debts to his customers can be sorted out in further court proceedings, Geiser-Sandoval said.

McKinley could not be reached for comment late Friday.

The trouble with Ryans by Mail was very similar to the problem with Exeters, Geiser-Sandoval said: Customers were paying for merchandise and never getting it, or worse, they were receiving nothing and getting billed for double the amount ordered.

Exeters operated in 1985 and 1986, first in Costa Mesa and then in Irvine, selling high-tech gadgetry by mail, Geiser-Sandoval said. Business was legitimate for two years, but then in 1987 “hundreds” of complaints from customers prompted the district attorney’s office to seek a court order forcing McKinley to supply customers’ merchandise before taking any new orders, Geiser-Sandoval said.

McKinley, 38, went out of business in 1987 and sent the district attorney’s office a check for $100,000, asking that it be distributed to about 150 customers who were owed money, Geiser-Sandoval said. But the vendors who had supplied him with merchandise on credit were left holding the bag, she said.

Geiser-Sandoval said she learned McKinley was in business again in August, but that he had registered it under his ex-wife’s name. Checking revealed that customers were being billed--sometimes for twice the amount--but few were receiving merchandise, she said.

Geiser-Sandoval contacted McKinley and asked to see his business records, but a day before their scheduled meeting she received a $10,000 check from him with a familiar request: please distribute the money to customers, Geiser-Sandoval said.

“He also said that if the stuff had been billed to a charge account, we should tell the customer to dispute it,” Geiser-Sandoval said.

McKinley has yet another dispute with the law. In August, he filed a claim against the Fountain Valley police, alleging an officer improperly stopped and searched him for several hours when he was driving his black Porsche.

Geiser-Sandoval said the officer was suspicious because his license plate--KEE BUY, an apparent reference to his mail-order business--sounded like the slang for kilogram. McKinley was detained until a drug-sniffing dog could be summoned to search the car for drugs, but none were found.