Local News in Brief : Sentence in Phone Fraud
The former secretary-treasurer of a Long Beach telephone sales business was sentenced to two years in prison for defrauding investors by persuading them to send money for non-existent currency contracts or foreign coins.
William Pearson is the last of four men to be sentenced for their operation of the now-defunct International City Investors Inc., which ran the high-pressure telephone sales operation in 1984 and 1985, costing 132 investors a total of $981,000.
U.S. District Judge James Ideman, who imposed the sentence Monday on Pearson, also ordered him to pay restitution in an amount still to be determined.
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