Phoenix confidential

by David Safier

I don't usually blog about this kind of thing, but the Phoenix connection makes it irresistable.

There have been lots of questions about Bonner & Associates, a Republican outreach firm which apparently uses all kinds of shady tactics to do its clients' bidding. But this is a new one to me: FLS Connect.

According to Talking Points Memo,

Minnesota-based FLS Connect uses low-wage workers to make fund-raising calls for a bevy of prominent GOP clients. And many of those workers — including those responsible for processing credit-card transactions — have felony convictions, the former employees said.

Here's the Phoenix connection.

And many workers in the company's Phoenix office are ex-cons, who are paid not much more than minimum wage, lack benefits, and work in squalid conditions.
The claim that ex-felons have access to credit-card information was first made by former FLS employee Brian Jones in an interview last week with the website Politics in Minnesota (PIM). In response, FLS Connect co-founder Jeff Larson denied the charge to PIM.

But in interviews with TPMmuckraker, two other recent employees, Alicia Baca and David Childs, backed Jones up. And Jones himself, a former felon who was recently fired from FLS's Phoenix office, told us he stood by his claim. "He is just a liar," Jones, 37, said of Larson.

Baca, Childs, and Jones explained that when a donor agrees to contribute money by credit card, they're told that they'll be transferred to a supervisor to handle the transaction. But in fact, the three said, they're transferred to another FLS employee in the same room. That person has gone through only a cursory screening process, and in no way acts as a supervisor to the caller making the fundraising pitch. Indeed, they said, he generally earns less money than the fundraising caller.

Baca, 23, said she started working at FLS's Phoenix office in June 2008, making $10 an hour as a fundraiser. But because her numbers were below par, she was made a "validator" — an employee who verifies credit-card information — at which she earned $9 an hour. She said that because her boyfriend already worked at FLS when she applied, she was hired without even an interview, and no screening process. And when she became a validator, giving her access to credit-card information, no additional screening was conducted.

All three former employees described FLS's Phoenix office as a haven for ex-felons, in part because Arizona makes it difficult for people with criminal convictions to find jobs, and FLS has become well-known among the state's inmate population for its willingness to hire ex-cons. "My cell-mate from prison got out before me and told me" about the job, Jones said.

Jones and Baca both estimated independently that about 75 percent of employees in FLS's Phoenix office had felony convictions. Baca said she thought the majority of validators did. Said Jones: "It did surprise me that these are the people doing the fund-raising for the GOP."

UPDATE: This is the original article from Politics in Minnesota that the Talking Points Memo story used as its starting point.