How we did it

There’s a proliferation of political action committees that raise most of their money from small-dollar donors then spend most of their money on fundraising costs and other overhead expenses. To quantify this trend, Public Integrity analyzed data from the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics covering 2001 through 2018. The analysis was limited to federal PACs not directly affiliated with a party or candidate.

To identify PACs spending heavily on overhead expenses, Public Integrity summed 68.7 million expenditure records to find the total amount of money each PAC spent on fundraising, wages and administration during two-year election cycles, such as the 2017-2018 election cycle. In all, about 320 PACs reported that more than 50 percent of their total expenditures fell into those categories during at least one two-year period. The list of about 320 PACs was further filtered to include only PACs that received more than 50 percent of the amount they raised during a given time period from donors each giving less than $200. The result was a list of a little more than 100 PACs.

For this analysis, PACs were only counted in a given cycle if they crossed those two thresholds — and also spent at least $10,000.

To understand fundraising by Richard Zeitlin’s companies, Public Integrity totaled campaign report data released by the Colorado Secretary of State, as well as reports filed in the states of California and Washington.

The four Pollock PACs together spent about $4 million from 2017 to 2019, almost all of what they raised. About $3.7 million of that went to Zeitlin’s companies, while the Pollocks brought home about $150,000. Most of the rest covered overhead.

The only political expenditures — less than 1 percent of overall spending — benefited Heller, the senator from Nevada who was defeated in the November 2018 general election.

William Pollock used his position as a law enforcement official in at least one solicitation, referring to himself as “Officer William Pollock, President/CEO” in the Police Officers Defense Alliance letter.

Pollock’s law enforcement career has been fraught of late. The family of a man Pollock shot six times and killed while on duty in July 2017 has sued Pollock for “excessive and unreasonable force.” Pollock has denied the allegations.

Pollock had been dispatched to the scene of a disturbance at a pawn shop, where he encountered a man with what local media described as a table knife. The man allegedly grabbed Pollock’s car door and turned toward Pollock.

Pollock fired twice and the man fell. According to the police department, the man attempted to get up, still holding the knife. Pollock then fired four more times, according to the lawsuit. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department investigated the shooting and found that Pollock, for the most part, followed department procedures. The district attorney declined to prosecute Pollock. He returned to patrol duty, but the lawsuit is still pending.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department hired Pollock in 2001, a spokesman confirmed. He currently serves as a patrol officer, earning $118,000 in 2018, plus $53,000 in benefits for a combined $170,600 in compensation, according to the organization Transparent Nevada.

C. Terry Raben, an accountant in Las Vegas who is paid by the Pollocks’ PACs and two other PACs that contract with Zeitlin’s companies, was out of the office when a Public Integrity reporter stopped by his office in May. He did not respond to a request for an interview sent via email and certified letter.

Kecia Pollock, however, was home when the reporter visited her house in Las Vegas in May.

The reporter said she wanted to talk about Pollock’s political action committees.

“I’m not going to talk to anybody,” Kecia Pollock said, tossing the reporter’s business card on the porch and quickly shutting the door.

Her husband did not respond to an email or to certified letters sent to their home and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. The phone numbers the Pollocks listed on their PAC registration paperwork are disconnected, and the numbers on the pledge letters signed by William Pollock lead to recorded messages that the voicemail box hasn’t been set up.

The Pollocks’ fortunes have markedly improved of late after filing for bankruptcy in 1998 and again in 2011.

Kecia Pollock’s Facebook page includes a picture of a new Lincoln.

Someone commented: “You so fancy mama Kecia!”

She replied, “Yes we are after all these years :)”

When the reporter visited in May, the Pollocks were living in a four-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot house within a gated neighborhood in northwest Las Vegas, about two miles from where Zeitlin lives. They didn’t own it, but it was valued at $500,000, according to Clark County tax records.

In August, the Pollocks bought a six-bedroom, three-bathroom home for $405,000 in a different gated community in Las Vegas.

The Zillow listing for the home, which is no longer on the market, describes it as “grandiose” and a “colossal estate” with a three-car garage, a spiral staircase and a “roman tub.”



Help us investigate telemarketers who claim they’re raising money for charitable causes. Did a telemarketer contact you about fundraising on behalf of a charity or political action committee? Let us know by texting us or leaving a voicemail at (202) 656-7178. You can also reach reporter Sarah Kleiner at sarahkpublicintegrity@gmail.com.

From pizza to fundraising

Richard Zeitlin was born in November 1970, the last of three sons of Sandra and Norman “Tize” Zeitlin in Milwaukee, Wis. His father is deceased, and his mother has little to say about him.

“I’m not in touch with my son,” she said by phone, declining further comment.

Zeitlin’s brother, Alan Zeitlin, a truck driver who still lives in Wisconsin, said his younger brother, “Rick,” went to high school in Milwaukee, and did not attend college.

Once, when Rick was 16 years old and delivering pizzas to a telemarketing office, Alan said a man there asked him if he wanted to make more money.

“He said, ‘Sure,’” Alan said. “The rest is history.”

Richard Zeitlin, right, and his brother, Alan Zeitlin, smoke cigars at the Aria in Las Vegas. Richard Zeitlin moved to Las Vegas from Milwaukee to start a telemarketing company in the 1990s. (Screenshot via Facebook)

During the past 12 months, Public Integrity pieced together Zeitlin’s history, interviewing people who know him personally and through work, and scouring court records, property documents, tax filings, building permits and fundraising disclosures made to state and federal regulators.

Morry Rosenblatt said he became friends with Zeitlin when they worked together in telemarketing as teenagers. Later, they became roommates. And much later, their friendship disintegrated.

Rosenblatt said he and Zeitlin decided to strike out on their own in Las Vegas. They formed Courtesy Call Inc. in 1994, according to court records.

Initially, Courtesy Call’s charity clients were small. The people who donated money to its charities wound up on a list of easy targets, and Courtesy Call workers contacted them repeatedly, Rosenblatt said.

“I know you are a sucker if you are giving money to a stranger on the phone,” Rosenblatt said. “I’m going to call you for the next veterans group, the firefighter groups, and I’m going to keep calling you for different people until you run out of money.”

“I’m going to call you for the next veterans group, the firefighter groups, and I’m going to keep calling you for different people until you run out of money.” Morry Rosenblatt, former colleague of richard zeitlin

In August 2003, Rosenblatt showed up for work, but Zeitlin had changed the locks and wouldn’t let him in, according to a lawsuit Rosenblatt filed against Zeitlin in December 2003. The lawsuit was settled before Zeitlin filed a response.

Zeitlin stopped paying Rosenblatt and told his partner he was terminated, according to the lawsuit. Zeitlin said he was planning to file a criminal complaint against Rosenblatt, alleging embezzlement and forgery.

Rosenblatt denied wrongdoing in his lawsuit and said he believed Zeitlin was trying to take control of the company and its assets. He asked the court for supervision because “any meeting between the two would likely be confrontational.”

The two settled Rosenblatt’s lawsuit in early 2004, with Zeitlin and the company agreeing to pay Rosenblatt $193,000, according to court documents.

The men haven’t spoken in 10 years, Rosenblatt said.

Rosenblatt, who eventually moved to California with his family, talks about Zeitlin and the work they did together in profane, and, at times, remorseful terms.

“We took money from people that were working hard,” Rosenblatt said. “That’s not right. I truly apologize for my part that I played in this shit.”

Investigators ask questions

Courtesy Call generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue each year during the mid-2000s, according to disclosures the company filed in Colorado, California and Washington.

In 2010, it reported raising $4 million in the aftermath of the Great Recession, according to disclosures filed in Colorado. And by 2014, the company was bringing in more than $9 million a year for clients. Of that amount, $8 million went to Courtesy Call.

The following year, Zeitlin purchased a six-bedroom home northwest of Las Vegas, which, at the time, was made of pink stucco. He bought it in late 2014 for $890,000 from Vanessa Rousso, a professional poker player and reality television star.

The next year, he began a $700,000 renovation project that changed the structure inside and out. He built a 1,900-square-foot “master retreat” and a 3,000-square-foot detached garage with a “casita,” according to Clark County, Nev., construction permits. The property, which sits on nearly an acre, is now valued at $1.9 million, according to county tax records.

As Zeitlin’s business success and wealth grew, he largely avoided public scrutiny by government regulators and investigators.

One brush with the law came in May 2009. The California attorney general filed a lawsuit against Courtesy Call and one of its charity clients, alleging they made “false, deceptive, and misleading statements to donors.” Courtesy Call denied the allegations in a response to the lawsuit, but agreed to settle for $17,000 without admitting wrongdoing.

The Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general in various states shut down at least five of the charity clients that contracted with Courtesy Call for allegedly misleading donors. Zeitlin was not a party in any of those lawsuits, nor were he or his companies accused of any wrongdoing.

One of the charities, Help the Vets Inc., was run by Neil G. Paulson, a former Florida lawyer who forfeited his law license before the Florida Bar could complete an investigation into whether he allegedly defrauded clients, court records show. The FTC and attorneys general in several states later shut down Help the Vets, alleging the “sham charity” brought in $20 million from donors between 2014 and 2017. The agencies permanently banned Paulson from running charities.

Paulson said “no comment” and hung up the phone when a reporter called.

In a letter sent to Public Integrity last week, Hansen — Zeitlin’s attorney — said Zeitlin and his companies “are certainly not responsible for the alleged actions of a very small number of previous charity clients.” Nor is it Zeitlin’s job to “police or otherwise investigate” the practices of his clients.

The FTC has a history of investigating telemarketers that raise funds in the name of charity. Complaints to the commission about charitable solicitations are on the rise. More than 4,000 such complaints were filed in 2018 — up from 2,500 in 2013.

In one case unrelated to Zeitlin, two operators of a telemarketing firm were banned from soliciting ever again, and they had to repay $18.8 million. And InfoCision, a telemarketing company that contracts with charities and politicians — also unrelated to Zeitlin — was fined by the FTC in 2018 over allegedly “false and misleading” tactics.

Zeitlin started a new company, Donor Relations, in 2016 and appears to have taken over Courtesy Call’s contracts, according to state charity disclosures.

In all, Courtesy Call and Donor Relations raised about $121 million from 2006 to 2018 for charity clients, according to Colorado fundraising solicitation reports. Zeitlin’s companies were paid about $106 million of that — about $90 million of which went to salaries. The charities that contract with Zeitlin’s firms received 12.1 percent — or $14.7 million.

The FTC was investigating whether Donor Relations and Courtesy Call — two of Zeitlin’s companies — were “engaging in unfair or deceptive acts or practices,” according to a court document filed by the commission in February 2018.

But the companies did not cooperate, according to the FTC, failing to meet deadlines and sending “patently inaccurate” documents. The FTC suddenly dropped the investigation in the fall of last year, citing an ongoing grand jury investigation involving Courtesy Call and Donor Relations.

An FTC spokesman confirmed the grand jury is located in southern Florida. Lois Greisman, who leads the commission’s division that polices consumer fraud, said she was not authorized to say anything about the investigation or Zeitlin.

Hansen, Zeitlin’s attorney, said neither Zeitlin nor his companies are a “target” of the grand jury investigation, and Zeitlin has fully cooperated with investigators. He said he could not say anything else about the investigation.

Greisman said in a recent phone interview that the commission has always made enforcing telemarketing rules a priority. But the FTC’s resources, like those of any law enforcement agency, are limited.

“The harm it causes is significant, and it has a ripple effect,” Greisman said. “The consumer who donates money, they’re not getting what they wished to get, the legitimate charity that would have received the money doesn’t have anything, and the person who would have been served by that charity isn’t being helped.”

Greisman put the onus on donors: “What I say to them is, don’t donate without doing some research, and particularly, I would say, don’t respond to a telemarketing solicitation without looking up the charity and finding out what it’s about.”