Telemarketing call center owner Richard Zeitlin has been sentenced to over a decade behind bars. In a recent turn of judicial events, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan handed down a sentence of 121 months to the culprit who pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, as reported by the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. The case against Zeitlin laid bare a calculated operation that deliberately misled donors who believed their generosity served charitable causes, when in fact, their contributions propped up a political advocacy strategy.
At the heart of Zeitlin's fraud was a classic bait to switch maneuver. The U.S. Attorney's Office disclosed that from approximately 2017 to 2020, Zeitlin instructed his employees to craftily modify call scripts to wrongly convince potential donors they were supporting direct-service organizations, not political action committees (PACs). This unscrupulous tactic aimed to unjustly tempt more contributors, swelling the coffers of his telemarketing business, which often pocketed about 90% of all donations. Sometimes his firm even retained a full 100% of contributions, leaving none for the causes pledged in their phone solicitations.
"Richard Zeitlin’s actions represent a profound breach of trust," said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. The case underscores the critical nature of donor trust and the fallout when exploitation occurs. Dive deeper into the details on the U.S. Attorney's Office website, where Zeitlin's years of deception are fully cataloged.
Zeitlin's attempts to bury his misconduct were manifest. In a moment of courtroom testimony, the schemer brazenly lied under oath, proclaiming neither he nor his staff influenced the scripts used during fundraising calls – an outright fabrication according to his own guilty plea. He was caught once more in a declaration to a federal judge, where he misrepresented his association with the entities central to the investigation. And as the walls of justice closed in, he went as far to hastily direct his underlings to permanently erase any digital breadcrumbs that could further implicate him.
