Virginia guy responsible for millions of spammy fraud phone calls faces prison time

We all hate getting the tons of spammy telemarketing calls that come in every day. Good news: one of the people responsible for some of them is facing serious prison time.

Barry Glenn Augustinsky, 55, of Poquoson, was convicted this week on federal charges of mail fraud, conspiracy to commit mail fraud, money laundering, unlawful monetary transactions, and obtaining information under false pretenses.

One down; a million more of these chodes to go.

According to court records and evidence presented at trial, Augustinsky engaged in a conspiracy in which representatives of One Ten Communications, a call center in Karachi, Pakistan, used Augustinsky’s VoIP services to make millions of voice calls to people in the United States.

During those calls, representatives of OneTen made false and fraudulent representations, including telling victims that their credit card debt would be reduced or eliminated if they sent payments to companies controlled by Augustinsky. Callers also represented that they were agents of various legitimate debt relief companies even though OneTen had no affiliation with those companies.

Relying on these false representations, victims from across the United States sent hundreds of personal checks to post office boxes in Portsmouth and Poquoson, which Augustinsky collected and deposited. He kept 30 percent of the proceeds from each check received for himself, took an additional cut from the funds as payment for OneTen’s use of his VoIP service, and from time to time sent funds back to OneTen in Pakistan via wire transfer.

Augustinsky, per the evidence presented at trial, knew that OneTen representatives were making false representations, that calls made by OneTen were spoofing caller identification information, and that many of the people receiving calls and sending checks were elderly.

Augustinsky also made false statements to a credit report company — claiming that he needed credit reports for “construction loan funding” — so that he could provide access to his overseas co-conspirator, who wanted access to the records to further the scheme and ultimately obtained more than 300 credit reports without authorization.

Augustinsky faces up to 20 years in prison.