5 May, 2004 – LAWFUEL – The co-owner and operator of a Beverly Hills-based telemarketing operation known as the Satellite Capital Group has pleaded guilty to federal charges related to a scheme that cost victims more than $6 million.
Richard Hines, 58, of Long Beach, pleaded guilty Monday afternoon in federal court
in Santa Ana to charges arising from a series of fraudulent investments his boiler
room sold between 1999 and 2003. Hines pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud
and two counts of money laundering.
Hines’s co-defendant and partner at Satellite Capital, John Temple, 63, of Chino
Hills, pleaded guilty on February 11 to mail fraud charges arising from his role in
operating the Beverly Hills boiler room.
As part of their guilty pleas, the defendants admitted to raising millions of
dollars from the sale of at least four different fraudulent investments and keeping
45 percent or more of the investors’ monies for their personal use. In soliciting
investors, Hines and Temple promised substantial returns on a variety of fraudulent
investments, including a Santa Barbara real estate venture, a television
infomercial company supposedly backed by former California Congressman Barry M.
Goldwater Jr., an Internet video game company that supposedly had ties to pop-star
Christina Aguilera and comic book legend Stan Lee, and an Internet multi-media
website that used”Happy Days” star Tom Bosley as a pitchman.
None of the investors received any returns on their investments, and the investments
themselves were unprofitable and, in most cases, non-existent.
Temple is scheduled to be sentenced before United States District Judge Alicemarie
H. Stotler on June 21, and Hines is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Stotler on
August 2.
With respect to the website investment, which was called YES Entertainment,
Satellite Capital was one of several telemarketing boiler rooms across the United
States and Canada that collectively raised more than $11 million for that
investment.
On December 4, 2002, two of the principals of YES and a telemarketer from another
Southern California boiler room were indicted for their involvement in the YES
fraud. YES principals, James S. Eberhart, 62, of Newport Beach, and Eugene M.
Carriere, 54, of Newport Beach, who successfully transferred millions of dollars of
the YES investors’ money to offshore accounts in Hong Kong and Singapore according
to the indictment, are fugitives. The telemarketer, Kenneth Gottlieb, 37, of Los
Angeles, pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced on December 15, 2003 to
three years in federal prison. In another criminal case, an associate of Gottlieb,
Deborah Probert, 50, of Encino, pleaded guilty to mail fraud for her role in
selling YES through her boiler room. Probert is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge
Stotler on June 14.
These related cases are the product of an extensive investigation by the Federal
Bureau of Investigation and United States Postal Inspection Service.
