Suburban dad scam artist sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for stealing $600K from jobseekers

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

Man admits to scamming hundreds of job seekers out of $638K
Charles Fields of Blaine pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in federal court for a pre-pandemic scheme featured on KARE 11 Investigates.

MINNEAPOLIS — While none of the fraud victims who talked to KARE 11 Investigates had ever met Charles Fields, they all knew his voice.

They took countless phone calls and recorded voice messages from a man who called himself Michael Brunn, convincing them the company Watertek Marketing was offering a great money-making opportunity selling water filtration systems.


While pleading guilty to wire fraud in federal court in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Fields admitted "Michael Brunn" was one of several aliases he used to falsely give his companies an air of credibility.

In one recorded voice message while posing as Michael Brunn, Fields said: "We're not like some company in a garage that said, 'Send us money.' That's not what it is."

At his change of plea hearing, however, Fields admitted that is essentially what his companies amounted to. He would frequently change company names — from Watertek Marketing to Water Innovations Group to Mile High H20 to The New H20.

In the end, Fields scammed 250 people out of $638,739 between 2015 and 2020, he admitted to Judge David Doty.

The victims responded to job postings on Craigslist that promised guaranteed salaries for selling Kangen water ionizers as sales representative

https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/suburban-scam-artist-admits-to-bilking-638k/89-f25e57c0-3762-4a35-8cde-1d75fde40558

[Stuckinthebush]

1. Wow - I remember in 1988 while looking for a first job out of college

I was in Boston and saw an ad in the paper looking for motivated individuals to make up to 100K per year. Being a very young, hungry and not too seasoned person I went to a group interview at some hotel. Sketchy to say the least. The guy started doing his pitch about the wonderful home water filtration systems we may have the opportunity to sell if deemed motivated enough. Immediately a few older people got up and walked out. The guy never missed a beat and kept talking. I thought "that's weird". But then a few more walked out soon after. When he got to the place in his "recruitment" pitch that all we would need to do is pre-purchase 1000 dollars of water filtration systems that we could easily turn into 10K within a week going door to door, I realized it was a BS scam. I got up and walked out. Some other dude outside of the conference room intercepted me and said something like "are you sure you want to walk away from such a lucrative opportunity? I looked over your resume and it looks promising." I said, "I never gave you a resume." and kept walking.

These water filtration scams have been around for 40 years. Crazy.

Glad they got the bastard.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

2. A friend answered an add to sell copiers. She knew it was a scam when she saw his raggedy apartment

He plan for making money was to pass the work on to others to sell copiers.