Former Poison the Well Bassist Sentenced to Federal Prison Time
Former Poison the Well bassist Alan Landsman is going to federal prison.
According to justice.gov, the 36-year-old Landsman has been convicted as one of seven co-conspirators who “preyed on churches, schools, homeless shelters, and businesses to steal more than $50 million through a sophisticated scheme that involved sham sales of light bulbs and cleaning supplies” through a Maryland-based telemarketing business, Midway Industries:
“Specifically, from 2003 through 2014, Midway employees would cold-call businesses making false representations, including that the business had an existing business relationship with Midway. During these cold-calls, the conspirators sought to obtain the personal information of an ‘authorized representative’ for the business, which the Midway collections department could use later to justify an order… As long as the victims continued paying the Midway invoices, in subsequent calls… the conspirators misrepresented that the balance of the victim’s order, or their ‘regular seasonal order’ had recently been shipped, despite no order having been made by the victim business, and no actual shipment having yet been sent.”
The report continues:
“…the conspirators ordered the light bulbs and cleaning supplies from a company located in New Jersey (supplier). They instructed the supplier to ship the products to the victim without an invoice, and to send the invoices directly to Midway… the conspirators then sent inflated invoices to the billing departments of the victims, that were regularly 900% greater than the prices Midway paid for the supplies, and sometimes greater than 8,000% above the supplier’s prices. When victims did not remit payment, the collections department at Midway repeatedly called the victims in order to force them to pay the inflated invoices. If the victim threatened to contact law enforcement or the Better Business Bureau… the conspirators offered to revise the invoice to a discounted rate, or take back a product for either a ‘re-stocking fee’ or ‘at cost,’ which was still substantially greater than the cost of the products purchased from the supplier.”
Lambgoat reports that Landsman has been sentenced to serve 30-72 months for conspiring to commit mail fraud, which he will begin this Wednesday, December 5, at Edgefield Satellite Prison Camp, a minimum security extension of South Carolina’s Federal Correctional Institution, Edgefield.
Landsman appears on Poison the Well’s debut album, The Opposite of December. He was fired from the band in 2000 under somewhat mysterious circumstances, with a statement from then-guitarist Derek Miller saying that specific details of Landsman’s firing “reach deep into our’s and his personal life.”
