Phone Card Marketing Plans Get Close LookStates are examining companies for possible marketing fraud

Phone Card Marketing Plans Get Close Look

States are examining companies for possible marketing fraud

By Neil Munro
Staff Writer

To head off potential fraudulent marketing schemes, state regulators are investigating several companies' efforts to mass market phone cards.

Companies such as Destiny Telecomm International Inc., Oakland, Calif., and start-up Fox Telcom Inc., Memphis, Tenn., are undergoing the investigations by regulators in such states as Alabama, North Carolina and Michigan.

Dennis Wright, an associate attorney general in Alabama and chief of the state's consumer affairs unit, is reviewing marketing plans prepared by Destiny for its 6,000 sales representatives in Alabama.

"We are trying to ensure the [Destiny] program ... is not a pyramid scheme," Wright said. Destiny - whose automated phone system assures callers that the company offers "the greatest business opportunity on the planet right now" - already has 500,000 independent sales representatives nationwide.

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