Illegal telemarketing charged

Thursday, Sept. 3, 1998 | 10:45 a.m.

A roving telemarketer, who operated out of a hotel room on the Las Vegas Strip for several days last week, has been arrested on charges of trying to cheat people in New Mexico and Iowa out of money.

Deputy Attorney General Grenville Pridham said Wednesday that Kevin Griffin, 42, La Puente, Calif., was arrested Monday by state agents on charges of trying to obtain money under false pretenses and unregistered telemarketing.

Pridham said Griffin called people in Iowa and New Mexico and told them they had each won a travel package plus $7,000 in cash but they had to pay $1,000 in a cashier's check to cover handling fees and taxes.

Griffin allegedly told them to sent a cashier's check. The victims in Iowa were to send it to an address in California and the person in New Mexico was to sent the money to New Orleans. Pridham said accomplices of Griffin were at both addresses. They were supposed to keep 30 percent of the money and the rest goes back to the telemarketer.

Griffin faces a maximum of seven years in prison plus a fine of $55,000.

Pridham said these telemarketers come into Las Vegas, operate for a few days and then leave, making it hard to trace them.

In another foiled telemarketing scheme, Keith Owen Adams has been indicted on 10 counts of money laundering and one count of wire fraud in what the U.S. attorney's office has termed a "rip-and-tear" telemarketing scheme.

Adams, who resided in Las Vegas, used the aliases Frank Burns, Dale Russell, David McCoy, Norman Nelson and Jim Jones, to telephone elderly victims and falsely inform them that they would receive large cash awards after sending a check to pay for taxes and fees.

The scheme netted Adams $44,629.

Fifteen elderly people were called in Indiana, Texas, California, Virginia, Kansas, Michigan, Hawaii and Kentucky.

Money was sent to mail boxes in Las Vegas and Henderson. Two fictitious bank accounts had also been set up at a local bank.

Adams represented himself to be the president of Publishers Clearing House.

According to court documents, Adams obtained lists of seniors who had previously been defrauded by telemarketers. He convinced victims that they had won cash awards and they must send a check from between $1,000 and $4,000 by overnight mail courier to collect their prizes.

Adams, according to the indictment, had no cash awards and had no intention of providing such awards. The collected money was specifically for his own use.