Word: oversold
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Bakker and Dortch could receive lengthy prison terms. They were charged with illegally taking some $4 million in bonuses out of the PTL trough. In addition, says the Government, they vastly oversold lifetime "partnerships" that promised lodging at the Grand Hotel and other accommodations at Bakker's Heritage USA theme park in Fort Mill, S.C. In one variation of the scam, some 9,700 hapless "partners" were offered the right to stay regularly in what turned out to be a single bunkhouse with 48 beds. As for the Taggart brothers, they are said to have helped themselves to $1.1 million...
...several hundred farmers whose attorneys agreed last week to consolidate their lawsuits into one national class action against Chubb. In most states, insurance laws dictate that coverage cannot be canceled once the initial premium is paid. Among Chubb's defenses: it did not realize that Good Weather agents had oversold the policies, mostly within two days of the deadline, without permission. But the plaintiffs counter that Chubb, which specializes in up-scale homeowners' and commercial insurance, has been in the business for more than a century and should know how to monitor demand. Insurance authorities in at least five states...
There is also a true relic of the age of pulp: Dashiell Hammett's Woman in the Dark (Knopf; 96 pages; $15.95), overpriced and oversold as a "novel," but compelling on its terms as a sketchbook romance between two losers who share a fierce sense of their own integrity. Other notable reprints include Michael Gilbert's Young Petrella (Harper & Row; 222 pages; $15.95), a collection of magazine stories from the 1950s and '60s that display his trademark Scotland Yard detective with a deadpan precision of mood worthy of Simenon, and A Double Life (Little, Brown; 246 pages; $17.95), short gothic...
...problem, charges Roy Woodruff, the former director of weapons research at Livermore, is that Teller oversold the X-ray laser, a proposed Star Wars device under development at the lab, to President Reagan. Not only were some of Teller's statements "technically incorrect," claims Woodruff, but "the optimistic schedules proposed by Dr. Teller for deployment of an X-ray laser weapon are impossible." Woodruff's accusations have split the lab into bitter factions; they have also cast doubt on the scientific integrity of Livermore, a facility founded with Teller's support in 1952, and cast a shadow over Reagan...
...million. During his 204-day rule, Falwell managed to raise $23 million but failed to rally the 114,000 "Lifetime Partners." They had sent Bakker contributions of $165 million in return for a lifelong guarantee of three nights' free lodging a year at Heritage USA. Bakker had hopelessly oversold available space. Some Partners objected to Falwell because they are Bakker admirers; more did so because they are Pentecostals. They saw Falwell as a usurper who had long opposed that exuberant style of faith...