Jury Finds 3 Defendants Guilty in $300M Telemarketing Fraud

MINNEAPOLIS (WJON News) - A federal jury has found three defendants guilty in a $300 million nationwide telemarketing fraud scheme that targeted elderly and vulnerable victims.

According to evidence presented at trial, 47-year-old Amondo Miller of Littleton, Colorado, 39-year-old Tashena Crump of Minneapolis, and 37-year-old Ballam Dudley of Plymouth, knowingly conspired with at least 40 other defendants to carry out a telemarketing scheme that began in at least 2000 and victimized several people across the United States, many of whom are elderly and vulnerable.

Miller, Crump, and Dudley accomplished their scheme by calling victim-consumers who had one or more existing magazine subscriptions and offering to "renew" the existing magazine subscriptions, often at a reduced cost. In reality, the defendants tricked the victim-consumers into signing up for entirely new magazine subscriptions, which they did not want and often could not afford. Some victim-consumers were fraudulently billed by as many as ten companies at a time and received more than $1,000 in monthly magazine subscription charges.

Throughout the scheme, the co-conspirators defrauded more than $300 million from over 150,000 victims nationwide.