Two men were sentenced to prison after the Justice Department said they and 62 others defrauded millions of dollars from older people for two decades in a nationwide magazine subscription scheme, USA Today reports. Anthony Eugene Moulder, of Fort Myers, Fla., and Abdou-Rahmane Diallo, were sentenced for their roles in a $300 million telemarketing fraud scheme where they targeted older and otherwise vulnerable people, said U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger in Minnesota. Luger's office called it the "magazine scam" and created a webpage for victims to recover stolen funds and make impact statements. Their sentencing closes part of the DOJ investigation into the 20-plus-year scheme that defrauded more than 150,000 victims. Defendants were charged with conspiracy, mail fraud, wire fraud and violating the Senior Citizens Against Marketing Scams Act of 1994. The defendants came from 14 states, Canada and the Philippines.
Moulder was sentenced to 10 years in prison for conspiracy to commit mail fraud, according to court documents. Diallo was sentenced to 7.5 years for two counts of wire fraud. The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service busted the scheme in 2020. There have been 58 guilty pleas, three people found not guilty and three found guilty at a trial. Prosecutors said Moulder bought "lead lists" that had information about people who subscribed to magazines. He directed his sales team to use deceptive sales scripts to force victims to make large or repeating payments to Moulder's four Florida businesses. Moulder scammed nearly $86.6 million from 2008 to 2020. Prosecutors say Diallo co-owned a Canadian company called Readers Services that preyed on people who were previously defrauded by magazine companies and were being billed by those companies. Diallo pretended to be from a magazine cancellation department and offered to pay off victims' outstanding balances to cancel their subscriptions in exchange for large lump-sum payments.
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