There’s Deja Vu in Telemarketing Arrest : Boiler room: A Costa Mesa man is held on suspicion of running an illegal operation that grossed up to $3,000 a day. He was convicted in September of similar activity in Santa Ana.

Prompted by a rash of complaints from victims of an allegedly fraudulent telemarketing scheme, police arrested a Costa Mesa man Friday--four days before he was to be sentenced for running a similar operation in Santa Ana.

James A. Winter, 27, was arrested at his storefront business at 8:30 a.m. after he was questioned and served with a search warrant, Costa Mesa Police Detective Steve Labbitt said.

Winter is being held on suspicion of running a fraudulent telemarketing operation in Fountain Valley and Costa Mesa for eight months, grossing $1,200 to $3,000 a day, Labbitt said.

“He’s pretty well-known,” said Labbitt, who is head of the department’s major-fraud unit. “He’s been working boiler rooms for a while.”

Labbitt said police became aware of the operation after the department received complaints from people who said they had sent checks of $244 to $400 to a business called Liberty Enterprises.

The business was being operated out of two suites in the 1500 block of Mesa Verde Drive East, he said.

Winter and four salesmen, who were not arrested, called hundreds of out-of-state residents, telling them that they were selected as winners of either a $10,000 check, a trip to Hawaii or varied other prizes, Labbitt said.

To claim their prize, victims were required first to send a check to Liberty Enterprises, Labbitt said, but “nothing of value was ever sent back” to victims.

Winter has been operating since March, when he allegedly set up a boiler room in Fountain Valley. After hearing complaints, Fountain Valley police questioned Winter but did not arrest him, Labbitt said.

Apparently scared off, Winter moved in May to Costa Mesa. There, investigators said, he ran the operation until Friday morning.

The four salesmen who worked for him were not arrested because they may not have known that they were involved in an illegal business, Labbitt said.

“They were just following a pitch sheet,” he said.

At the suites where he was arrested, investigators confiscated hundreds of names and addresses, bank statements and other documents that will be used as evidence, Labbitt said.

It was unclear how much money was collected from out-of-state residents, Labbitt said, but Winter’s bank account was also seized.

Winter was being held on $200,000 bail at Costa Mesa City Jail and was expected to be arraigned in Central Municipal Court on Monday, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel Barrett McNerney, who is handling the case.

Bail was set much higher than the normal $10,000 for telemarketing fraud allegations because “we consider him to be a flight risk,” McNerney said.

On Sept. 11, Winter pleaded guilty to telemarketing fraud stemming from a 2-year-old charge that he operated a boiler room, using as an address a postal box on South Bristol Street in Santa Ana, officials said.

Winter was arrested by a detective Nov. 10, 1988, as he was collecting mail from the postal box, Santa Ana police spokeswoman Maureen Haacker said.

In that operation, he told out-of-state victims that they were winners of a TV, car or other prizes and requested checks of $179 for a “one-time manufacturer’s fee,” Haacker said.