5 reasons to pick up HBO’s Telemarketers

Three-episode HBO docu-series The Telemarketers opens looking suspiciously scammy – as if it was shot on a toddler’s smeary tablet. The truth is far more scandalous … and juicy.  Welcome to a tale so intriguing that it won creators Pat Pespas and Sam Lipman-Stern, director Adam Bhala Lough, Uncut Gems creators the Safdie brothers, and producer Danny McBride, the Critics' Choice Best True Crime Documentary Award in 2023.

The Telemarketers starts with Pat P and Sam’s efforts to investigate their former employers, telemarketing corporation CDG (Civic Development Group). Sam started working at CDG in 2001, after dropping out of high school at the age of 14. Around 2007, he bonded with co-worker Pat, and they started filming digital video of the bizarre things going on in their New Jersey cubicle farm. Instead of just posting a low-budget version of workplace comedy The Office on YouTube, though, Sam and Pat became convinced that CDG’s owners were running a billion-dollar charity scam. 

While Sam, Pat and other telemarketers read from scripts promising potential donors that 100% of their donations would go to charities that CDG claimed to represent, these groups would receive only 10 to 15 percent of the donation. The lions’ share went to CDG’s owners, Scott Pasch and David Keezer and their families. It wasn’t the first time that Pasch and Keezer had broken FTC (Federal Trade Commission) charity regulations and, as The Telemarketers reveals, it wouldn’t be the last. But one charity in particular was in on the con.

If you’re not sold yet, don’t hang up. Stay on the line for five top moments to watch for in The Telemarketers. Binge The Telemarketers now.

1. Telemarketing is…fun?

In episode 1, former CDG Office manager Sabrina Ross compares CDG to a “cookout”. The firm employed “the unemployable”. And as long as telemarketers were meeting their aggressive quotas, they were free to do as they pleased in the office. We see people rocking up for work in vests and pyjama pants, having a lights-out dance party, dealing drugs and taking heroin in the bathroom, engaging in prostitution, and giving a colleague a tattoo right there in the office chair. You could bring your pet turtle to work in an expanded foam cup. You could sell pitbull puppies. Every day was like Casual Friday at the end of the world.

In episode 2, one former CDG telemarketer, Santino Tha God, sums it up: “CDG, man. That was the best job I could get … it was foul people there. It was sneaky people there. And grimy people there. I wouldn’t work nowhere else but CDG right now, if it was open.”

2. Crooks raised money for cops

Despite representing the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP, a mutual aid organisation for police officers) as their biggest client, CDG would recruit telemarketers directly from prison halfway houses. Former Telemarketer Faruq Davis estimates, “We had criminals in there, probably every other cubicle…You had people who were committing criminal activities inside and outside of the office, but we’re calling for policemen.” 

In episode 2, “Jeff”, an anonymous former CDG telemarketer who launched his own company to cash in on the scam, points out, “If you want a good f*****g salesman, hire a f*****g crackhead. I’m deadass serious. They know how to talk to people. They know how to get what they want out of people.” How good are they? Jeff reveals that his callers hit up an 84-year-old man, who wrote them a cheque for $1 000 every single day. He estimates that they got $82 000 out of the man in the space of four months. 

3. Say no and we’ll get you!

In episode 2, Sam and Pat film a work-from-home telemarketer named Thomas Bailiff, who’s calling on behalf of the Police Athletic League. He’s all care and consideration until a caller hangs up on him, and he explodes. Tom is an ex-con. “I had a high school sweetheart, planning on getting married, and while I was in the Marines she left me. I got depressed, experimented with mescaline and all of that culminated to one night where I ended up hallucinating, snapping, and ended up killing an innocent person,” he explains, seemingly contrite. 

According to the newspaper report that comes up on screen, 20-year-old Tom raped 22-year-old Nancy Clark before stabbing her through the heart with his Marine’s knife, then dumped her body in the woods. The prosecutor on the case called Tom a “sexual sadist who hates women”. As we watch Tom at work, he reserves his nastiest comments for women who don’t give him what he wants: “Anna, f*** you. Hope your house catches on fire. Hope your whole fucking neighbourhood gets shot up, b****. F***you.” Tom the telemarketer has access to the phone number and the address of every woman he calls.

4. The intimidation game

What could be scarier than a killer with a knife? Putting on a cop voice is a running joke through The Telemarketers, and we see telemarketers play at being cops to “intimidate” the people they’re calling – a scam that immigrant business owners prove especially vulnerable to. “Shem”, a telemarketer who goes by multiple aliases, makes sure that the person he’s calling can overhear his police scanner through the line, so that they think they’re on the line with a real cop. 

Jump to episode 2, just before the half-hour mark, to see an expert in action as “Anthony Falcone” calls to solicit a donation for the New Jersey State Police Relief Association after getting a company’s phone number from the ad on the side of their work truck. He promises to recommend the owner’s business to officers, friends and family. It’s like watching a spaza version of Keyzer Soze from the film The Usual Suspects, as “Anthony” uses environmental cues to his advantage to back up his story and punch it home. “Mike” the business owner is so keen to appease a cop that he doesn’t stop to ask why a police officer who’s on active duty is making fundraiser calls. 

5. The cons are the cops. The cops are the cons.

On 2 December 2009, the New Jersey office of CDG that Sam and Pat worked at was shut down practically overnight. Sabrina Ross reveals that she was actively shredding documents when the FTC’s white fans pulled up and agents confiscated the company’s telemarketing scripts! CDG’s “consultants” (telemarketers like Sam and Pat) had made 189 million calls, telling donors that they were calling directly from FOP itself, and that 100% of the donations would support injured officers, and the widows and children of fallen officers. Both of those points were lies. 

But in episode 2, emails from the FTC’s evidence files prove that in 2003, Tim Downs from the Indiana FOP threatened to fire CDG if they didn’t include those points in their telemarketers’ scripts. Over three years, these lies drove donations from $5 million a year to $250 million. We also find out that FOP really used those donations to do things like fund legal fees for cops facing misconduct charges (like Darren Wilson), and to lobby the US congress for police immunity from prosecution, while hundreds of thousands went to social events like golf outings and parties for FOP members. Families and the officers themselves would be lucky to get $1 000.

Scott Pasch and David Keezer had to sell their Van Gogh and Picasso paintings, million-dollar houses, guitar collections, and more to pay FTC fines. But Pat asks why FOP didn’t get called out, commenting, “If I hired people to rob banks, I’d go to jail.” In episode 3, David Vladeck, who led the FTC’s prosecution, admits to Sam and Pat, "Because police unions are incredibly powerful. That’s the argument. Who wants to be on the other side of the Fraternal Order of Police?" And this is just the tip of the iceberg. It gets dirtier and colder the deeper you dig into The Telemarketers, as more groups like FOP figure out how to scam, and robo-calling technology makes the payday even more tempting. 

Binge The Telemarketers now.

Connect with more True Crime stories on Showmax.