The HBO docuseries “Telemarketers” leaves audiences aghast – and maybe wondering whether there’s any end in sight to the jaw-dropping, industry-infesting graft portrayed by two guys who first met at a notorious New Jersey call center known for scamming consumers.
The three-part series begins with voyeuristic scenes shot in the early 2000s at the Civic Development Group, a New Brunswick-based telemarketing company where the pair of ragtag investigators worked. In 2010, the company would would go on to pay a record $18.8 million FTC settlement for duping consumers into donating to fire, police and veterans’ charities, while only a sliver of what CDG collected went to those groups.
The raucous sales team included a 14-year-old high school dropout, Sam Lipman-Stern, who began videotaping his coworkers’ hijinks as they wrestled in between cubicles, gave each other tattoos, smoked weed and snorted heroin – all while chatting on the phone to customers.
One of Lipman-Stern’s favorite people was Pat J. Pespas, a charismatic 30-something heroin addict described in the series as a “telemarketing legend.” Pespas gleefully admits on film that “we call people up on behalf of some bulls— organization, and chisel ’em out of money.”
When Lipman-Stern and Pespas reunited years later, they found the CDG-style playbook had become the gold standard in cold-calling for money. The series alleges that even police fraternal organizations are in on the grift, either taking a cut or looking the other way. Lipman-Stern and Pespas, former perpetrators, became investigators.
Gothamist spoke in separate interviews with the two longtime buddies. Lipman-Stern, now 36, is a professional filmmaker who jets between Los Angeles for work and his home in Medellín, Colombia.
Pespas, now 54 and a born-again Christian, is sober and lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Sue. On film, he’s personable, loud and brash — with big body language and a booming voice. Speaking to…
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