Telemarketer Bilked Elderly, Investigators Say

A Buena Park telemarketer, using an increasingly popular method of operation authorities have dubbed “rip and tear,” has been arrested on federal charges accusing him of bilking $100,000 from four senior citizens.

Clinton Maurice Tucker, 27, used prepaid calling cards and moved constantly to different motel rooms and pay phones to avoid detection as he called victims around the nation, according a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.

Authorities accuse Tucker of falsely promising victims huge cash prizes of more than $100,000 that they would receive after they sent him money to cover taxes and fees that ran as high as $31,000 each. No one received any prize, according to court documents.

Tucker was arrested Thursday as part of continuing investigations by the county’s boiler room task force, a group of local, state and federal agencies trying to shut down the proliferation of telemarketing schemes aimed at the elderly.

Tucker, however, didn’t operate out of a boiler room, where sellers sit amid rows of telephones calling people and delivering canned pitches to sell products or seek donations.

Using phony names and different motels in Stanton and elsewhere, court documents allege, Tucker called potential victims on pay phones and charged the calls against 1,500 minutes of prepaid calling cards.

The effort not only kept him in operation for more than a year, authorities said, but made it more difficult to identify him and shut the scheme down.

“This is a type of operation we’re seeing with more frequency,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. S. Robert Raskin Jr. “A ‘rip and tear’ refers to the fly-by-night nature of these operations.”

“They set up quickly in one locale and move quickly to another one, operating out of one motel room one day, another motel room the next,” he said. “They use one mail drop one day, another on another day. It’s all part of elaborate effort to avoid detection.”

Tucker targeted only senior citizens, said Orange County Sheriff’s Sgt. Dennis DeMaio. Each of the four cases detailed in court papers involved people from 65 to 82.

In a sworn statement to the court, Sheriff’s Det. Adam Powell said that Tucker used such corporate names as Lande International, Reader’s Digest, WCI and United States Purchasing Exchange.

Authorities said the investigation into Tucker’s business continues.

Tucker, who was released on $100,000 bond Thursday, will enter a plea at his arraignment, which is scheduled for March 2 in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana.