Florida woman admits to defrauding seniors out of $86 million in magazine fraud scheme

A Florida woman pleaded guilty Friday to bilking senior victims out of more than $86 million in a magazine telemarking scam that prosecutors have described as the nation's largest-ever elder fraud case.

Rhonda Jean Moulder, 62, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud in order to avoid trial in January. She admitted to working as a manager for multiple Florida companies that used fraudulent sales scripts to induce consumers to make large or repeated payments for magazine subscriptions. According to her guilty plea, Moulder participated in the scam from 2001 through 2020, when a Minnesota federal grand jury indicted 43 defendants in the case.

The case is the first time federal prosecutors in Minnesota have charged a case under the Senior Citizens Against Marketing Scams Act of 1994, which seeks to protect seniors from predatory scams. Court documents described how the investigation led by the FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service came out of a 2016 Minnesota Attorney General's Office lawsuit against Wayne R. Dahl Jr., a 51-year-old Fridley man whose Your Magazine Service, Inc., was later ordered by a judge to pay $20 million. Dahl has also since pleaded guilty to running a decadelong scam that defrauded at least 13,000 people out of $11 million.

Moulder's brother, Anthony Moulder, has been identified as a key leader of the $300 million nationwide fraud conspiracy and had control over the companies involved. On Friday, Rhonda Moulder testified that her brother — and other co-conspirators — traded lists of customers with active magazine subscriptions so they could call and pose as representatives from the companies through which the senior victims had purchased the subscriptions.

The telemarketers would claim that the victim's account was set to renew at a higher subscription rate and falsely offer to turn off their auto renewal or reduce their monthly billing rates. Moulder managed telemarking call centers, overseeing the fraud on a daily basis while responding to Better Business Bureau complaints from victims.

Moulder entered her plea via Zoom from her Florida home on Friday. According to her plea agreement, sentencing guideline calculations call for a sentence of between 15 ¹⁄₂ years and 19 ¹⁄₂ years in federal prison, in addition to $100,000 in restitution to victims in the case.

Senior U.S. District Judge John Tunheim will make the final determination on Moulder's penalty, but he said he would hold off on scheduling her sentencing hearing until after a January trial in the case.

Five defendants — including Anthony Moulder and Russell Rahm, another alleged conspiracy leader — are scheduled for trial on Jan. 9, 2023, in Minneapolis. Nine others are scheduled to stand trial in the case on Feb. 13.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Harry Jacobs and Joseph Thompson are leading the prosecution in this case — the same team of prosecutors in the ongoing Feeding Our Future fraud case.