September Scams: BS High & Telemarketers

Are you in the mood for a very specific binge? Well, I've got two compelling scammer documentaries that you might want to dive into.

BS High: This is a fascinating movie about Roy Johnson, a man who essentially created a fake high school called Bishop Sycamore High that purported to be a football powerhouse. He recruited young athletes who didn't get football scholarships out of high school or were otherwise disenfranchised, and promised to prep them for a year to play at an elite level and get the notice of college recruiters so all their football dreams would come true.

As you can imagine, this is a terrible story about a con artist and the families he swindled. What's fascinating about it is that Johnson is the star of the documentary, willingly talking to the filmmakers about his scam, and displaying an almost pathological intensity to lie...but in an honest way? The man is an absolute piece of garbage, but you know what's worse? The fact that he got away with this whole scheme and didn't end up in jail. Because the things he did were deemed so nuts, that no one thought you even needed to write a law to say "hey, don't do that." 

This is a very American tale about football, hubris, lack of opportunity for disadvantaged youths, and the complete unwillingness of government bureaucracy to do anything to right a local wrong unless something is broadcast on television and gets a national spotlight. I can't promise you will feel good after watching this film, but it is certainly compelling viewing.

Telemarketers: This is a three-part documentary series that was filmed over the course of two decades by Sam Lipman-Stern, a man who worked at a New Jersey office of Civic Development Group (CDG), a telemarketing company. He joined CDG as a wayward teenager, a high-school dropout who needed a way to make money, and CDG was known as a place that would hire anyone as long as they could make sales. Sam started filming the shenanigans that went on at this inane office, a place that was the stuff of HR nightmares. Many of the employees were former prisoners or drug dealers, but Sam befriends a man named Pat Pespas. While Pat was a heroin addict, he was also an expert salesman and would rack up commissions daily even if he was almost falling asleep at his desk. But when Pat realizes that his calls and scripts where CDG purports to be fundraising for various charities feel bogus, he and Sam embark on an epic years-long investigation to discover just how deep this conspiracy goes.

The show is definitely shaggy and not terribly well-edited. Sam never quite made it as a filmmaker, and bits of footage are repetitive and cobbled together haphazardly. But the central tenet is still fascinating, a vast conspiracy between the police and telemarketing companies designed to fleece people (mostly elderly folks who are the only ones who answer their phones anymore, and immigrants who are terrified of the police) of money that ultimately goes to line the pockets of greedy businessmen. And as with BS High, this is yet another example of folks who get by without breaking any major laws and therefore periodically get a slap on the wrist before they just start the whole scheme up again under a new name.

Again, this is not a movie designed to make you feel good about anything that's going on, and again, it will leave you with plenty of distaste for the American political system and the bureaucracy that impedes the ability to actually protect citizens from scam artists. But the beautiful thing about both these movies is that you feel like they are going to get results simply because now these stories have been broadcast and lawmakers will be subject to the most motivating feeling of all...shame. So go ahead and watch Telemarketers. The more eyeballs we get on it, the closer we might be to shutting down these fraudsters for good.