ETS Phone Scam Case
ETS Payphones which was charged in an 83 Count Indictment in a fraud and money laundering case, went to the jury on Wednesday afternoon, September 28, 2005.
Edwards was accused of running a ponzi scheme in which he built his corporation into one that was losing 5 million dollars per month. As there were 73,000 phones out, and those phones were sold to owners that paid from five to seven thousand dollars for them, they were left without monies when Edwards' company ran into problems and ultimately into bankruptcy.
Defense Attorney Edwin Marger pointed out to the jury that Edwards' company, ETS Payphones, was a grand business venture that failed dramatically. "Mr. Edwards is a dreamer and maybe even a fool, but he is no crook", said Marger. He believed that he could become the biggest phone company in the United States and the best. Mr. Marger attacked the prosecutors for suggesting that Edwards expressions of Christianity were part of his con game. Marger went on to attack the government as a dream crushing octopus made up of unfeeling bureaucrats. "The funds of the government often seem limitless, said Marger, but when it comes to the taking of monies and the knowledge of a ponzi scheme, no one would know better than the government what a ponzi scheme is, as it runs the biggest ponzi scheme in the world, they call it Social Security."
The prosecutors said that the investors never were told that the company was losing money and that the only way to get more people to invest was to sell telephones and make everybody believe that the phone business was profitable.
The government put many of the "victims" on the stand and several of them testified that they had lost over half a million dollars which constituted their life savings.
