Call Center Owner Indicted in Political Phone Jamming Campaign

By Mike Bevel, CollectionIndustry.com

A former owner of an Idaho-based telemarketing firm has pleaded “not guilty” to charges that he knowingly participated in a Republican scheme to jam Democrat’s “Get Out the Vote!” phone lines on Election Day 2002, according to an Associated Press article filed yesterday.

Shaun Hansen, who co-owned Mylo Enterprises with his business partner Lee LeBlanc, told the AP, “We knew that we were calling and hanging up on numbers. We didn’t know what it was for.” So why’d he do it?

According to Hansen, Mylo Enterprises was contracted by a Virginia-based political consulting firm, GOP Marketplace, to call phone numbers associated with branches of New Hampshire’s Democratic Party as well as a statewide firefighter?s union. Hansen alleges he didn?t know what the calls were for, adding that he and LeBlanc met with GOP Marketplace attorneys and were told not to worry. “It didn’t make a lot of sense to me,” Hansen has said, “but I took their word.”

Mylo Enterprises had worked with GOP Marketplace in the past on several telephone surveys.

Hansen isn’t the only one to be caught up in this net of potential political malfeasance. Allen Raymond, the former president of GOP Marketplace, is currently serving a three-month sentence for his involvement in the scheme. Chuck McGee, former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, was charged after pleading guilty and served 7 months in prison. James Tobin, President Bush’s New England chairman for his 2004 reelection campaign, was also charged after pleading guilty and could face up to 5 years in prison.