10-28-04 -- Ferreira, Luis et al. -- Indictment -- News Release

Telemarketers Indicted, Arrested for Theft of Competitor's Calling List

NEWARK - The co-owners of a formerly Woodbridge-based telemarketing company were arrested today in Florida on an Indictment charging them with conspiring to steal a telemarketing list from an Edison-based competitor with the names and telephone numbers of millions of potential fund-raising contacts, U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie announced.

Luis Ferreira and Christopher Heins, co-owners of Community Affairs Inc. (CAI), allegedly recruited an information technology employee from the competing company, Civic Development Group (CDG) of Edison, to steal the donor list. The caller list had an approximate market value of $3.6 million - a figure based on its value had the list been legitimately rented from CDG for one year.

The employee recruited by Ferreira and Heins is identified in the Indictment as an un-indicted co-conspirator.

The Indictment names a third defendant, Anthony Caruso, Jr., an employee of Ferreira and Heins, who allegedly uploaded the stolen donor information to CAI computers and distributed it to CAI telemarketing call centers in the United States.

Ferreira, 37, of Coral Springs, Fla.; Heins, 34, of Parkland, Fla.; and Caruso, 39, of Coconut Creek, Fla., were arrested this morning at their homes in Florida by Special Agents of the FBI. They are scheduled to make initial appearances in federal court in Ft. Lauderdale today before a U.S. Magistrate Judge. They will be returned to New Jersey for arraignment on the Indictment in the coming weeks.

CAI moved from Woodbridge to Pompano Beach, Fla., within months of the FBI's execution of search warrants at the former Woodbridge location.

According to the Indictment, Ferreira asked the unindicted co-conspirator, while the co-conspirator was still working at CDG, to steal CDG's proprietary customer database. Using a 30-gigabyte external data drive, the unindicted co-conspirator allegedly downloaded the names and telephone numbers of approximately six million potential donors from the CDG computers and turned them over to owners and employees of CAI.

Ferreira, Heins and Caruso, are each charged with one count of conspiracy to steal the caller list and four counts of interstate transportation of the stolen list. The conspiracy count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Each of the interstate transport and theft charges carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Telemarketing companies such as CAI and CDG often devote a significant portion of their resources to develop and maintain customer call lists of individuals who have donated to telemarketing campaigns in the past. The database stolen by CAI was CDG's most valuable asset and constituted proprietary information, according to the Indictment. Under terms of telemarketing contracts, the telemarketing company often keeps as much as 80 to 90 percent of pledged donations, a portion of which is profit, with the rest used to cover salaries, the costs of mailings and other expenses, according to the Indictment.

CAI conducted many telemarketing campaigns with the stolen calling list, including one for the Children's Cancer Assistance Network. For example, from October 1999 to June 2001. CAI raised approximately $1.4 million nationwide in the name of the Children's Cancer Assistance Network, according to the Indictment. Of that amount, CAI retained approximately $1.3 million while the charity received the remainder, about $135,000.

In August 1999, CAI hired the unindicted co-conspirator for its management information systems. While working at home, the co-conspirator allegedly organized the names and numbers from the calling lists and began emailing them in to CAI at the rate of approximately 300,000 per week. Caruso then allegedly uploaded the data to the CAI computer system. After that, Caruso and others at the company distributed the call lists to CAI's call centers in Georgia and West Virginia to be used in telemarketing campaigns like that of the Children's Cancer Assistance Network.

Despite Indictment, every defendant is presumed innocent, unless and until found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt following a trial at which the defendant has all of the trial rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and federal law.

Christie credited Special Agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Joseph Billy, Jr., with development the case against the defendants.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stacey Levine.

-end-

Defense Counsel: to be clarified at initial appearances.