When the FBI Comes Calling…®

September 27, 2000

Telemarketer sentenced to 14 years for fraud; Austin man convicted

By Andrea Ball, American-Statesman Staff

The perfect sales pitch bought David McIntosh 14 years in prison.

The Austin man was a cunning and convincing player in a three-year telemarketing scheme that bilked rainy-day funds and life savings from 130 investors, prosecutors said. But on Tuesday, the smooth talker convicted of swindling people out of $2.5 million stood silently in an Austin federal courtroom as a judge hit him with the stiffest possible sentence.

"Mr. McIntosh has no remorse," prosecutor Mark Lane said. "He has never expressed it."

McIntosh, convicted in March on multiple counts of fraud and money laundering, plans to appeal.

"He maintains his innocence," said Douglas McNabb, McIntosh's lawyer. "He has filed his notice of appeal and hopes that it will straighten out this sentence."

The man accused of being McIntosh's partner, Ken Harthun of Kentucky, is scheduled for trial in November. Another defendant has pleaded guilty and is to be sentenced in January.

The telemarketing scam started in 1993, when McIntosh and several others set up shop in Austin, Lane said.

Using lead lists purchased from other telemarketing companies, the men lured potential victims with a tempting, but tempered, offer. They didn't promise big bucks fast, Lane said. Rather, they offered a risk-free investment in oil and gas notes with solid returns over time. They claimed they were backed by a trust and wouldn't take a dime in commission.

Willard Fey of Tucker, Ga., believed them. He invested $324,000 -- and never got it back.

"They weren't promising wild stuff," said Fey, who testified against McIntosh at his trial. "It was real enough. Their materials were well done but not overly done."

Prosecutors say the telemarketers blew the money on cars and nightclubs. McIntosh bought a house without telling his partners, Lane said .

But the man who prosecutors say won over clients with his perfect sales pitch said little during his day in court. McIntosh, dressed neatly in a dark suit and blue tie, clenched his jaw and shifted in his seat frequently while awaiting his sentence. He declined to speak on his behalf when asked for comment by U.S. District Judge James Nowlin.

"Your honor," he said quietly, "I respectfully have nothing to say."

FBI Special Agent Matthew Gravelle said the scheme differed from others because victims lived all over the country, from New York to California. Yet its main components -- greed and dishonesty -- are staples of tele- marketing fraud.

"They're ruthless in the lies they'll tell to get people to part with their money," Gravelle said. "They are without conscience."

McIntosh's sentence comes a week after eight men were sentenced for bilking $1.8 million out of 2,000 senior citizens. That telemarketing scheme, which also operated out of Austin, targeted retirees already victimized by other phone scams.

But fraudulent telemarketers won't stop looking for victims, Lane said.

"They're going to make 100 telephone calls, and 99 of us are going to hang up on them and tell them to go away," he said. "But they're looking for that one that won't. That's how they make their living."