- Telemarketers is a powerful documentary series exposing the corrupt and illegal activities of a New Jersey telemarketing company called CDG.
- The CDG collects donations for a variety of causes, but keeps 90-100% of the money for themselves, leaving only a small percentage to the organizations they claim to represent.
- The show focuses on a longtime CDG employee named Pat Sespas, a heroin addict and top salesman who exemplifies the company’s morally bankrupt culture.
It’s one of those things we could all do without, right? As soon as you sit down for a delicious meal (usually at dinner), the phone rings and it’s a telemarketer trying to sell you something or donate to a cause you didn’t even know existed. The smartest of you probably have a screening system on your cell phone for unrecognized numbers, but sometimes these nimrods get through and you’re left with the choice of being rude and hanging up or politely telling them to stone. . Maybe you’ll donate to the cause. Either way, you should definitely check out the new Safdie Brothers docu-series on HBO MAX called Telemarketers. It’s an unabashed look at the cutthroat and corrupt nature of the ubiquitous business that has been the bane of our existence ever since Alexander Graham Bell invented this thing called the telephone.
Who are the Safdie brothers?
Josh And Benny Safdie are brothers who live outside of New York, and up to this point in their careers they’ve mostly told stories about New Yorkers and people from neighboring New Jersey. They started making documentaries like Telemarketersbut in recent years has also written and directed well-known feature films such as Uncut Gems With Adam Sandler in 2019 and good time starring Robert Pattison in 2017. The brothers return to their true history roots with the story of a telemarketing conglomerate called Civic Development Group based in New Jersey. And although they are just the producers of the project, the style of the directors Adam Bhala Loh And Sam Lipman-Stern the usage was clearly influenced by some of the raw and unapologetic early documentary work of the Safdie Brothers, including Lenny Cook, the story of the high school basketball phenomenon and its path to the NBA. The attitude of the Big Apple to its work is clearly expressed, and Telemarketers is the last one. Lipman-Stern was actually a long-time employee of the company he exposes in the film, and was involved in all the strange activities that took place daily in the call center.
What are “telemarketers” about?
Well, you might have guessed from the title that The Telemarketers is a documentary about the New Jersey-based Civic Development Group, or CDG, a firm that has been around since the early 90s and has made more money than any other another telemarketing company in the world. country by a wide margin. The series takes a deep look at the seedy underbelly of people who are not only on the other end of the line when they call you, but the corporate executives at the top who make millions of dollars every year and turn a blind eye. . Their methods are generally unpleasant and often completely illegal. There is so much wrong with this business and CDG deals that it’s hard to know where to start, but we’ll start with standard hiring procedures. In New Jersey’s premier call center, the CDG is made up of both offenders on probation and active addicts. It is one of the few jobs in the country where people with extensive criminal records can find jobs that offer wages close to the living wage. It is mentioned several times in the first episode that you don’t know what crimes the person in the cubicle next to you has committed. It has a fraternity vibe that includes getting tattoos, open drinking, rampant drug use, all the way to having sex in bathrooms.
What do telemarketers sell?
So what are all these weirdos and losers doing on the phone all day? The biggest racket that CDG has is fundraising for all sorts of causes and groups that barely see any of the money they bring in. The CDG will write a large check to an organization like the New Jersey Police Fraternal Order for the right to call people and say they represent a police officer’s fund and that the proceeds will benefit the families of officers who have died in the line of duty. The truth is that CDG keeps 90% to 100% of every dollar they raise. Only 10% or less goes to the group they claim to represent. In years past, the CDG has also fraudulently claimed to represent many other charities representing the families of fallen officers, retired Maine firefighters, Utah police officers, and critically ill children in something as ambiguous as the so-called Cancer Survivor Fund. (Sounds like “Human Foundation” from Seinfeld - money for people, right?). It’s a shameless George Costanza-level racket, and they’re using the phone as a weapon. There is a joke in the first episode that CDG actually stands for “Criminals Doing Good”, but they are actually criminals who do what they do best - very illegal things.
Patrick J. Sespas is a great example of a CDG employee
The show’s first episode features one of CDG’s oldest employees and telemarketers named Pat Sespas. Lipman-Stern ironically refers to Sespas as a “telemarketing legend”, but in reality he is nothing more than a burned-out ex-con with a serious heroin addiction. He takes drugs before, during and after calls throughout the day. In fact, the whole episode is reminiscent of a sensational documentary. Dope love which also takes place in the New York area and depicts the daily lives of four crooks and drug addicts over a 12-month period. And the management is looking the other way because Sespas is also one of the best sellers in the entire company. Sespas literally moves from heroin-induced sleepiness straight to a well-articulated phone harassment scenario. So in some respects he is legendary, but he encapsulates everything that is morally scattered and illegal in CDG.
In one scene, former workers tell stories about how all the other employees were drug dealers and that any drug you want could be bought in the building, and Sespas, although charismatic and charming, is a middle-aged poster boy for everything that’s wrong. with industry. He earned the nicknames “Pat Tupper” and “Pat Smucker” from his frequent trips to the bathroom to take heroin, and is highly respected by his co-workers, probably because he can still act like a hardcore addict. Sespas even encourages Lipman-Stern to capture him snorting heroin on camera before going to work, and CDG’s boiler room culture encourages this behavior. Lipman-Stern added in an interview with USA Today: “They were selling a huge amount of drugs outside the office. A heroin kingpin worked there… There was prostitution in the office.”
Telemarketers is one of the most important documentary series produced by HBO MAX
These are the big things that this show reveals and we can tell from just seeing the first episode. These predators are able to get into our ears with a single keystroke. The next time you see that dreaded “unknown caller” or “probably spam” message on your mobile, remember who might be on the other end of the line. Their job depends on getting your hard-earned money out of your wallet. It could be Pat Pespas calling the scam organization to get his next fix. The shame is that this is all perfectly legal and the million dollar business model is entirely dependent on ignorance, gullibility and intimidation of people about what is real and what is not.
Use this article as a kind of public announcement and make sure that if you are going to hand over the phone, the person on the other end of the line is thoroughly vetted and vouched for. Or just getting in the nose of CDG employees like Patrick J. Sespas. Stay tuned as future episodes are set to make Sespas the mole for director Lipman-Stern as the two of them try to blow the lid off of it all.
Source: Collider
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