New York Paralegal Blog

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that six defendants extradited from Israel—GUY MAYO, ELAD MAYO, ASI ALMAKIAS, LIOR ORGAD, DAVID YAMIN, and MOR GALANTI—were sentenced yesterday for their participation in a lottery telemarketing fraud scheme through which they stole approximately $2 million from elderly victims in the United States between 2007 and September 2008. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sentenced the defendants to the following prison terms: 108 months for GUY MAYO; 78 months for ELAD MAYO; 72 months for ASI ALMAKIAS; 60 months for LIOR ORGAD; 37 months for MOR GALANTI; and 33 months for DAVID YAMIN. According to indictments and an information previously filed in Manhattan federal court: The defendants participated in a phoney “lottery prize” scheme that targeted hundreds of victims, mostly elderly, throughout the United States. The defendants identified victims by purchasing the names and contact information o...

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the guilty pleas of seven individuals, all residents of Israel, for their participation in a lottery telemarketing fraud scheme through which they stole approximately $2 million from elderly victims in the United States between 2007 and September 2008. LIOR ORGAD, DAVID YAMIN, and MOR GALANTI pled guilty today before Magistrate Judge JAMES C. FRANCIS IV. GUY MAYO, ELAD MAYO, ASI ALMAKIAS, and YANIV KALBERS pled guilty before Magistrate Judge ANDREW J. PECK on March 15, 2011.

Court Order Imposes Five-Year Ban on Telemarketing to Consumers A financial services telemarketer who allegedly violated several requirements of the Federal Trade Commission’s Do Not Call Rule – from calling hundreds of thousands of consumers on the National Do Not Call Registry to failing to transmit accurate caller ID information – has settled the government’s charges and is banned from telemarketing to consumers for five years. In November 2007, as part of a multi-case crackdown on Do Not Call violators, the government charged Global Mortgage Funding, Inc. (Global Mortgage) and its owner, Damian Robert Kutzner, with unlawfully calling consumers on the Do Not Call Registry in an attempt to sell financial products, including mortgages and related financing services. The complaint also charged the defendants with violating the FTC’s Do Not Call Rule by failing to transmit accurate caller ID information, failing to pay fees required to access the Registry, and abandoning calls by not c...

Under the terms of a settlement announced by the Federal Trade Commission today, a list broker, formerly based in Arizona, and the two companies he ran have agreed to a proposed court order barring them from violating the agency’s Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR). The proposed order settles a Commission complaint charging that the defendants assisted and facilitated telemarketers of fraudulent “advance-fee” credit cards by providing them with unencrypted consumer information. The FTC complaint alleged the defendants sold “full data leads” to these telemarketers that included consumers’ bank account and routing information, credit card numbers, credit card security codes, and credit card expiration dates, without first obtaining authorization from consumers to do so, all the while knowing that the data would be used in schemes designed to mislead and defraud consumers. The proposed order also contains a suspended $120,000 judgment against the defendants. The full judgment will be imposed ...