Word: boilers
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Fraudulent telemarketers are particularly hard to catch because they tend to keep their operations small. The typical setup is a "boiler room" in which a dozen or more employees reading from sales scripts feverishly work the phones, contacting hundreds of potential victims a day. Thousands of boiler rooms are located in the Sunbelt states stretching from Florida to California. At one point, so many sprang up in part of Fort Lauderdale that federal investigators dubbed the area "Maggot Mile...
...Boiler-room operators in Nevada and California begin the day as early as 5 a.m., calling people on the East Coast. Then they work their way westward, taking advantage of the changing time zones to make the maximum number of calls. Consumers who call back with questions are invariably told that the salesman is in a meeting. Once stung, many victims are deluged with other offers. Reason: boiler rooms sell sucker lists to one another...
...elude detection by local authorities, these operations usually solicit only out-of-state targets. On rare occasions local officials are alerted by complaints from distant victims and manage to track the money trail back to the boiler room. But the crooks typically flee across state lines and start all over again...
...night a week before the primary, Koch served his favorite chocolate-chip cookies -- the same ones, he told them, that he had pressed on Mother Teresa. Dukakis talked with the mayor for 40 minutes. Koch was polite but distant. He asked about Jackson, and Dukakis responded with the usual boiler plate about disagreeing with Jackson on some issues but treating him with respect. Koch was not pleased. Only a week earlier Koch had, with his grating candor, said any Jew would be "crazy" to vote for Jackson. Just before the end of the discussion, Kitty interrupted. "Ed," she said...
Clever fellow, our fricasseed Freddy. Now he stalks the dreams of his posse's teenage children. A vision of loathsomeness with his moldy black felt hat, scalded face, red-and-green-striped sweater and right-hand glove with steel "finger-knives," he lures each sleeping adolescent to a convenient boiler room (every building in town has one) or into their grungiest fears. And if they don't wake up in time, he executes them. Kind of harrowing, the number of Elm Street kids who die in their sleep. As one boy says, "It's not exactly a safe place...