Word: scams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Searles was taken by a telemarketing scam, but he has plenty of company. In the shadow of the fast-growing telemarketing industry, which sold more than $100 billion in legitimate products and services over the phone last year, telephone swindlers are springing up like mushrooms. Telescam artists are bamboozling consumers with pitches about everything from fine art and exotic vacations to time-share condos and precious-metals ventures...
...Some scam artists pitch legitimate-sounding items over the phone at plausible prices, then send products that bear little resemblance to the descriptions. "Car phones," for example, turn out to be cheap telephones in the shape of a car. One "sewing machine" looks more like a stapler, and the "piano" fits in the palm of your hand. "Home stereo entertainment systems" turn out to be tiny radios, and "satellite dishes" look suspiciously like Chinese woks...
Just when you thought that spring break could not possibly get any more sophomoric, the Miller Brewing Co. presents Beachin' Times, a 16-page glossy advertisement that advises party dudes how to "scam babes" and turn the traditional Florida fling vacation "into your own personal trout farm." But the Beachin' Times, a color supplement that appeared in 55 campus newspapers in the U.S., has been wiped out by indignant collegians. At the University of Wisconsin, students even threatened to boycott the Milwaukee company's brew, while the Daily Iowan's editorial column slammed Miller for "propaganda that is so blatantly...
...SCAM...
...most serious allegation facing MacDonald -- who has yet to respond to a committee subpoena -- concerns a tawdry kickback scam. In July 1987 MacDonald arranged for the Navajos to buy the 491,000-acre Big Boquillas ranch near Seligman, Ariz. The tribe paid $33.4 million for the place, which only two days earlier had been purchased by an oil company for $26.2 million. Real estate broker Byron ("Bud") Brown testified that when he was fixing the deal with MacDonald, the Navajo leader smiled and said, "I assume I'll be taken care of." Replied Brown: "Certainly...