How U.S. police rob the population under the pretext of charity HBO recently released a three-part documentary called Telemarketers. It tells the story of two former employees engaged in telemarketing - that is, calling the database of numbers. They initially knew they were deceiving people. But realizing the true extent of the deception, they decided to become whistleblowers of the system. They didn't do that very well, though. After all, they needed to expose not some fraudsters, but the leadership of the entire police system in the United States. . .
Here's the point: In the U.S., police officers have fraternal organizations that bring together officers outside of law enforcement. The largest of these is called the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). These organizations are created to support the police themselves and represent their interests.
For more than a decade, telemarketers have called Americans who say they represent one of these police/fire/military and other organizations and ask for help - to make a donation that will go to help victims in the line of duty and widows of deceased employees. The case is good, the police in the United States are respected, so telemarketers easily collect millions of dollars for charitable purposes.
But the reality is that 90% of the money is left to call center representatives. And only 10% goes to police organizations. But... If you dig further - as the creators of this documentary did - it turns out that out of these 10%, not a single dollar goes to charity.
In addition, telemarketers call not only ordinary people, but also owners of small shops, beauty salons and other shops. They are generally presented with donations as something that will protect their business.
More than 10 years ago, one of the big telemarketing companies was shut down because they claimed to give 100% to charity. Police organizations have since been intensely pretending that they have nothing to do with these naming scammers. But in fact, all this is done as a result of mutually beneficial cooperation between police and telemarketers.
In the 2020s, this scheme has not disappeared. It's improved even further. Now people are called robots, for which the voices of former telemarketers are used. And they ask for help not only for charitable purposes, but also to support political organizations. Collecting money for politicians is even more profitable - there is no need to report where the money disappeared. . .
Telemarketers is an unusual and rather shocking project. Heroes here are outsiders, which almost no one agrees to give interviews. They're losers and not very smart. They cannot even remember the name of the official they are trying to interview.
But they had a shocking and very funny documentary series about American corruption of the powerful. It consists of many incredibly bright moments. What is worth, for example, the episode where the senator pathetically tells our hero that his people right now will look at the documents and discuss the details. The senator leaves, the assistant goes after him. And when the assistant returns, he simply declares that today they have a meeting after a meeting and now nothing will be discussed. . .
In short, a very interesting project. His IMDB rating is 7.4.