Editoral Editoral (April 23, 2004)

Challenge to halt telemarketing scams

The national "do not call" list was supposed to give consumers a chance to avoid annoying telemarketing operations. By signing up, families finally could hope to eat dinner uninterrupted by sales presentations from boiler room operations, including many that are located in other states or even other countries.

But although passage of the legislation received wide publicity, implementation has been spotty, particularly among immigrant communities like those in Mountain View.

That much more needs to be done was illustrated last week in a Page 1 Voice story that described how several low-income, Spanish-speaking families here were harassed by telemarketers, who claimed police would not respond to their home unless they donated to a police officers' association.

Not realizing that withholding police service is illegal, they donated to the organization through its Arizona telemarketers, Midwest Publishing-AZ. Midwest keeps roughly 85 percent of the revenues it collects and forwards what's left to the charity it represents, in this case, the California Narcotic Officiers' Association.

Had the residents known the threats were empty and that nearly all of their donations would be used to pay the telemarketers themselves, they would have undoubtedly refused to donate. And to his credit, Mountain View Police Chief Scott Vermeer fired off a letter to the narcotic officers' association asking them to "Please help me keep this type of unsavory activity out of my community."

When contacted by the Voice a spokesperson for Midwest denied that his workers targeted certain demographic groups, adding that ". . . occasionally, you have a telemarketer having a bad day."

Given the evidence involved in the events described in last week's story, it is difficult to believe that the telemarketers involved were not intentionally targeting low-income residents, who they could convince to send untraceable cash through the mail. It is doubly egregious that the sales pitch was made under the cover of one police association, backed up with a threat to withhold service from another.

Unfortunately, everyone who owns a telephone is susceptible to receiving an unwanted and possibly unsavory telemarketing call. The tragedy is that usually, the most vulnerable residents -- especially immigrants and the elderly -- are those who most often get trapped in the telemarketers' net.

And although the "do not call" list is federal legislation, the city should do its share to protect all its citizens from illegal schemes, whether they come over the phone or in person.

At the very least, the City of Mountain View should prepare written materials in foreign languages that could be distributed by the police department, or through ESL programs sponsored by the school districts. Such literature would be inexpensive to produce but effective if the materials were delivered to the right places.

There is no reason why everyone in Mountain View shouldn't know the two maxims of telephone use: Never give your credit card number to anyone, and never send cash to anyone you don't know just because they ask for it or threaten you.

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