The grant will fund a full-time prosecutor and support staff and expenses for at least 18 months. The Attorney General's Office will be working with many different agencies concerned about telemarketing fraud, including AARP, RSVP, Area Agencies on Aging and Adult Protective Services. The United States Attorney, Charles Tetzlaff, the State's Attorneys and Sheriffs Association have pledged to work with the Office of the Attorney General to address telemarketing fraud in Vermont and elsewhere in northern New England. In some cases victims find themselves with goods they do not want or need. In other cases they give money away to unscrupulous charitable fundraisers.
Victims come from all backgrounds and all levels of education and income.
Make no mistake, telemarketing fraud is a very big problem here in this small state. Under the grant, the Attorney General will have one or more phone lines of willing targets transferred into the Attorney General's Office to be answered by a trained investigator, and tape recorded for future prosecution. My father, who had suffered a stroke, kept being pressured into buying thousands of dollars worth of magazines that he had no interest in. We had to have his phone number changed to stop the calls. I would have loved to have those calls go right to law enforcement.