In a year of the shady coming to light, it seems we have, yet, another instance in which one person has been accused for toying with the minds of many.According to NPR, Michael Davenport, ex-bassist of The Ataris, has recently been claimed for running an online fraudulent scam involving real estate. In December of 2017 Davenport was indicted by the United States Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Illinois. This indictment was due to the ex-bassist allegedly defrauding around 100,000 people across the entire United States with 27 million dollars accumulating over a span of seven years. Davenport and his co-worker (who is of now unnamed) were to be arraigned in eastern St. Louis this past Wednesday, January 17th. According to the Santa Barbara Independent, the offices of the alleged fraud and his partner were raided right before the arrest.

The alleged charges made against Davenport were first discovered when his company American Standards, apparently founded by the bassist in 2009 in Santa Barbara, CA, began to advertise houses-for-sale through craigslist far below the original market value of an advertised home. After a possible customer contacted the American Standard offices, the company would offer to sell the customer the listing of houses they have accrued, as summarized by the indictment, for $199. The price apparently also covered “title searches and deed transfers.”

When a customer would try to purchase a house from the listing or became upset (to say the least), the company would bring forth their customer service representatives  to essentially halt or interfere with the customer going any further in the process. One of the many strategies was to say that the listed houses were no longer available. As stated by the indictment and restated by NPR, customer service “spent most of their time fielding phone calls from angry customers and homeowners whose houses had been included on American Standard’s list without their permission.” Another strategy involved customer service telling customers that the reason homeowners were saying their homes were not for sale (as possible buyers would call the actual homes) was because the owners were bashful about their financial situation and did not want to deter the buyer due to the issues.

Michael Davenport and a manager of his company Cynthia Rawlinson were both indicted for this alleged fraudulent scam.

Upon NPR reaching the Davenport attorney Alan G. Karrow no quote was released.