We’re watching the documentary series “Telemarketers” in October. The three-part doc follows a whistleblower investigation that spans nearly two decades, as former call center employees learn their old job was an even bigger scam than they thought. You can stream “Telemarketers” on Max, with a subscription. And you can subscribe here to get the whole series in your inbox.
Let me paint an audio portrait of the last year of the day-to-day life of one of my close relatives. He was a man of faith in his mid-80s with a close-knit family. His dog was either yapping or snoring. A cable channel nattered away in the background. And then, the home phone rang. A few minutes passed and the rings came again. I once counted 11 sets of rings in just one hour, with daily crescendos in the morning and late afternoon.
Nearly all of the calls, it seemed to me, were from telemarketers. Some solicitations were legitimate, like a reminder to renew a magazine subscription, some were borderline — pitches to buy herbal creams or commemorative coins. Others were outright abusive. The near-constant ringing clouded my mind, and discerning whether a call was from a friend or a telemarketing foe was like trying to do your taxes in a casino by the slot machines; the racket makes it hard to think straight.
Other family members suggested not picking up the phone, but that would only encourage the pitch-meisters to keep calling. Plus, some calls from unknown numbers should not be missed, like those from a doctor’s office or a grandkid. I hooked up a device to his phone that was supposed to block spam numbers, but it was finicky and sometimes blocked legitimate calls.
Who places calls like this? “Telemarketers,” the three-part documentary series my crew is watching for Econ Extra Credit this month, answers the question. Two somewhat-endearing knuckleheads — Sam Lipman-Stern, who’s a bit of a stoner, the other, Patrick J. Pespas, a recovering addict — try their hands at documentary filmmaking. They start at a seedy call center in New Jersey run by Civic Development Group, one of biggest telemarketing frauds in U.S. history. Many of the calls that Pespas and Lipman-Stern made were on behalf of fraternal orders of police. (A fraternal order of police is an organization that often serves as a social club, a union and provides legal services for its member cops.) But as little as 10% of a donation went to the police association; the lion’s share went to the telemarketing firm. The show is informative, shocking, achingly funny and often profane, so keep that in mind in deciding whether to watch.
I have had my own encounters with telephone fraudsters when I was working on a Marketplace project about aging and financial vulnerability called “Brains and Losses.” During my reporting, I met an 80-year-old part-time school nurse in New Jersey, who had previously fallen victim to a six-figure fraud. I sat in her living room with her as her phone rang nearly nonstop. When she decided to pick up, we both heard a strange, synthetic sounding voice addressing her by name that claimed the nurse had just won a $2.2 million cash prize. All she had to do was pay some hefty “taxes” up front and a suitcase with her “prize winnings” would arrive at her doorstep. Provide her credit card number and the prize would be hers, the caller claimed. It was complete baloney, but the nurse almost went for it. I called the police on her behalf, who said they heard about this scam all the time in a community with many retirees.
Why did the nurse keep picking up the phone? I have theories. Some of it might have been due to sleep deprivation: The nurse told me her phone had constantly rung all night. But it also might be that some people just need to talk to someone, anyone. Peter Lichtenberg, an Wayne State University expert on protecting older people from financial exploitation, found that 20% of seniors answer those calls out of loneliness.
Despite so many wild, lurid scenes in “Telemarketers,” I found myself fixating on a smaller moment in the series. Pespas, one of the telemarketers who later decides to expose abuses in the industry, is on the phone showing off his technique for prying donations out of older Americans. He appears to be attentive and genial, projecting empathy as he speaks to two older-sounding marks who tell him their days aren’t going well. He seemed to exploit their need for connection.
Having mentioned all this, let me set the record straight on something. While the HBO documentary has many instances of telemarketers shaking down oldsters, it is important to remember that a greater percentage of younger people fall victim to scams in general than older people, according to the Better Business Bureau and Federal Trade Commission data. Younger people may not answer voice calls these days — you have noticed that, right? — but they are using TikTok and other social media where scam attempts abound.
Send us your scam stories
Have you ever been scammed, or caught onto a scam before you’d been had? What did you do? What did you learn? We want to hear your stories. Reply to this email or send a note to extracredit@marketplace.org.
P.S. Pespas was reported missing last week. He had been living in Easton, Pennsylvania, near the New Jersey border, and his family and the filmmakers have asked for help in locating him.
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