DENVER — A man who defrauded tens of thousands of victims through a nationwide telemarketing scheme related to magazine subscriptions will spend five years in prison.
According to court documents, for more than a decade, 54-year-old Henry Aragon of Golden ran the scheme. During that time, he and his co-defendants defrauded more than 150,000 victims across the country, many of whom were older or otherwise susceptible to fraud.
They carried out their scheme using a network of dozens of fraudulent magazine sales companies in the United States and Canada. Call center employees made calls using deceptive sales scripts designed to defraud consumers by persuading them— through a series of lies and misrepresentations — to make large or repeat payments to the companies.
In some cases, they falsely told victims they were calling about an existing magazine subscription package and offered to reduce their payments. In reality, they were signing them up for expensive, entirely new subscriptions.
One victim ended up with more than a dozen subscriptions from different fraudulent companies, the Department of Justice said.
The result was that a single consumer went from having one magazine subscription to, at times, more than a dozen, all with fraudulent magazine companies. Aragon and his companies defrauded thousands of victims and collected more than $19 million from victims.
Aragon pleaded guilty on July 5, 2022, to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and tax evasion. He was sentenced on Nov. 7, 2024, to five years in prison, followed by two years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $19,051,667 in restitution to the victims and $1,490,011 in restitution to the IRS for his tax evasion.
