Co-Leader of $30 Million Telemarketing Fraud Pleads Guilty

New York, NY – Michael J. Garcia, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Martin Ficke, the Special Agent in Charge of the New York Office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”), announced that Stephan Clark, a Canadian citizen who was the co-owner of a company in Montreal that engaged in a massive telemarketing fraud, pled guilty in Manhattan federal court today to two separate conspiracy counts stemming from his role in the scheme, which targeted approximately 100,000 of U.S. victims between early 2002 and late 2003.

 According to a superseding indictment (the “Indictment”) against Clark and co-defendants Leslie Pinsky and Raymond Payne, earlier criminal complaints in the case (the “Complaints”), and Clark's statements in his guilty plea, CLARK and PINSKY ran First Choice Tele-Services Corporation (“First Choice”).

First Choice employed telemarketers who made unsolicited “cold-calls” to low income U.S. residents with poor credit. In those calls, First Choice offered U.S. residents “guaranteed” credit cards - for a fee that ranged from $249 to $299. First Choice telemarketers working for Pinsky and Clark also obtained the victims’ bank account information, which First Choice used to initiate transfers of funds from the victims’ bank accounts to an account First Choice held at HSBC Bank (“HSBC”) in Manhattan. Read more at ice.gov