– A network that let sellers of fraudulent credit cards hide behind fake Canadian front men while running their schemes from the United States, Canada, India, and the Caribbean has been shuttered, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced Feb. 27.
The order came from a federal district court in Waco, Texas, earlier this month. The FTC said court-imposed safeguards from an earlier restraining order are extended by the new order, as are court receivers' control over Utah-based Assail Inc. President Kyle Kimoto, accused of being mastermind of the scheme.
Kimoto and two Assail officers, Cliff Dunn and Mike Henriksen, were among those named in a preliminary injunction that also included Summit Communications President Matthew Ho, Capital First Benefits President Ben Lee, and Premier One Benefits President Johnson Salanga. Kimoto's personal assets were turned over to a court receiver's control, while Dunn's, Henriksen's, and Assail's assets were frozen. The assets of the other companies and presidents also were frozen, the FTC said.
Law enforcement agencies and private groups in British Columbia, Florida, Iowa, Idaho, and Nebraska as well as Better Business Bureaus in Reno, Idaho Falls, and southeastern Florida did much of the legwork in breaking the case, based on hundreds of complaints they got after the schemers opened up "mail drops in their locations that pretended to be the sellers' places of business," according to an FTC statement.
"[The companies] and their Canadian officers were elaborate 'fronts' created by … Assail Inc. to hide the fraud," the FTC statement continued, adding that the agency also got help from MasterCard, Dun and Bradstreet, and other legitimate financial businesses to help prove the operation was a scam.
Two other groups of defendants also faced court orders regarding their assets. Infinium Inc. and Market-Reps.com Inc. and their president, Brian Schofield, had their assets frozen and placed under court receivership control. Specialty Outsourcing Solutions also saw its assets frozen but was not put into receivership, the FTC said.
