Minnesota political consultant Jeff Larson -- a founding partner in the company, FLS Connect, which has offices in St. Paul and Phoenix -- vehemently denied that any ex-convicts working at FLS have access to credit card information.
The company's accuser, Brian Jones (pictured), is a 37-year-old, six-time convicted felon who was fired two weeks ago from his job as an $11.50-an-hour "telephone service representative" at the FLS Connect call center in Phoenix. Jones and Larson agree on one thing: Jones was terminated for purportedly "misleading" a potential donor during a call.
Jones alleged he was fired at the personal direction of Larson after an Ohio politician complained to Larson about a solicitation call that Jones made to a female acquaintance of his. (Jones said he believes the woman got angry because he kept her on the phone a long time, as he says phone solicitors are trained to do.)
Jones also claimed that it's standard practice to tell potential donors that they are being transferred to a supervisor if they agree to provide a credit card number, but that they are simply being transferred to a different phone bank employee.
"It's not a supervisor," he said. "It could be the guy sitting right next to you, and he probably just got out of prison." (Jones volunteered that he spent time in a federal prison for possession of a stolen credit card, a claim confirmed by penal records.)
Larson denied that call center employees can gain access to credit card data. When potential donors want to give a card number, he said, they are in fact transferred to a superior. He further said that the company has never experienced credit card fraud in the 10 years it's been in business.
"The regular fundrdaising agents don't collect credit card information," he said. "[Jones] never had access to that type of stuff. We have special people who are trained, monitored and checked who get those calls."
Larson also claimed that Jones lied on his job application: In a space where the applicant is asked if he or she has been convicted of a felony in the last seven years, he said Jones checked "no." Jones said he left the space blank, because that's what prison officials advise job applicants to do, telling them to explain it during a job interview.
"So what you've got is a six-time felon who lied on his application -- a disgruntled employee who was fired for cause, for misleading people on the phone," Larson said.
Larson refused to be more specific about the charge of misleading donors.
Jones, who worked as a car salesman before going to work at FLS Connect, and whose criminal convictions include burglary and attempted burglary, insisted that he had not misled any potential donors.
The call factory
"They hire anybody," Jones said of FLS Connect. "They don't do a background check or anything."The reason I applied there is because I have felony convictions, and it's hard to get a job. Other people told me that if I went there, I'd see other people I knew from prison. It's pretty much a turnover place for prison."
Larson, whose company is based in St. Paul, denied that FLS Connect hires "known criminals," though he acknowledged that the company doesn't perform background checks on potential employees.
"I don't have a lot to do with the hiring, but I know we don't go out and hire known criminals," Larson said. "But if people have a felony conviction and they've paid their debt to society, and they're out on the street, I'm not going to tell you that those people are ineligible to be hired.
"We have a lengthy interview and screening process. But no, we don't actually do a background check on the people who are making the phone calls."
Jones said FLS Connect employees regularly "mislead" the people they call on behalf of Republican candidates and causes, implying that they actually live in the same state -- often Minnesota (where FLS Connect did months of work raising funds for then-U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman's 2008 campaign and the subsequent months-long recount).
"Most people we call think we're volunteers for whatever candidate we're calling for," Jones said. "We don't lie if they ask -- if they ask, we have to tell them that we're a paid fundraiser out of Arizona -- but we'll say things like, 'our state of Texas' or whatever.
"You have to ask them for whatever dollar amount comes up on the screen. You don't let them go unless they're on a cell phone or if they're on the other line to the doctor about a serious illness. Under no other circumstance do you let them go. You let them hang up; you don't hang up."
Jones said employees in the Phoenix FLS call center -- one of three operated by the company; the others are in Mankato and St. Cloud -- use the term "liars' list" for a database of people who have previously been hit up by phone for donations and pledged money but never paid. (Larson denied that such a list, or term, exists.) These lists help callers rack up the pledges, Jones said. "You do good [using] that. If you're calling on the liars' list, you'll get 50 pledges."
FLS Connect and Larson spent much of 2008 making headlines both locally and nationally.
A little more than a year ago, Larson, who served as CEO of the Minneapolis-St. Paul 2008 Host Committee -- the group that spearheaaded the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul -- forked over more than $75,000 to buy a new wardrobe at the Minneapolis Neiman Marcus store for newly anointed GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Although Larson's position as CEO of the host committee was technically unpaid, the committee's board agreed this summer to grant him a $400,000 bonus because it deemed the convention a success and there was money left over. (His company benefited from Republican politicking as well: FLS Connect raked in $8 million during the 2007-08 election cycle just from the Republican National Committee, according to Federal Election Commission records.)
Larson also drew media attention in early summer 2008 when it was revealed that he had rented part of a one-bedroom basement apartment in his million-dollar Washington, D.C., town house to Coleman for $600 a month. Larson, one of Coleman's closest confidants, was accused of cutting a "sweetheart deal" for Coleman, for whose political action committee Larson served as treasurer.
Jones believes that if potential donors knew more about the people who call them as many as three times a week asking for money for Republican candidates and causes, it would be a cause of great consternation.
"We make political calls to people around the country -- a bunch of felons who know nothing about politics," Jones said. "We can't even vote."
Larson said he recognized Jones' name, but "I couldn't tell you who he was."
"If that's the way he makes his calls, that's why he's not working for us," Larson added. "We don't mislead people. That's completely not accurate. We don't tell them things that aren't true."