Telemarketer Sentenced for Fraud

A Simi Valley man was sentenced Friday to 90 days in Ventura County Jail and ordered to pay $250,000 in fines and restitution after pleading guilty to one count of fraudulent telemarketing.

Stanton Alan Sklar, 58, ran Simi Valley-based American Supply Systems Inc., which sold office supplies to businesses across the United States, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Mitchell Disney. The company must pay a fine of $125,000 and an additional $125,000 to more than 1,000 businesses that were targeted by the telemarketing operation, Disney said.

Chris Pinnick, 48, of Reseda, an hourly employee who managed the firm’s collections department, was sentenced last month to 120 hours in the County Jail’s Direct Work program for his role in the fraudulent operation.

Sklar and Pinnick were charged after the district attorney’s office and the Better Business Bureau received dozens of complaints from small businesses and banks that they had been tricked into buying rolls of credit card machine paper at “grossly inflated” prices, Disney said. The telemarketing operation had existed for about five years, he said.

The district attorney’s Consumer and Environmental Protection Division began investigating the business in April, and uncovered hundreds of audio tapes, 8,000 pages of documents--including sales scripts--and angry complaint letters from customers, Disney said. Many of the telemarketers were local high school students.

The business folded in August, and all defendants are restricted from further telemarketing activities, Disney said.

Attorneys for American Supply Systems could not be reached Friday.