Norman Newman Pleads Guilty In $95.5M Mail Fraud Scheme

DANBURY, CT — An executive at a Danbury-based company has pleaded guilty to facilitating fraud schemes that resulted in at least $9.5 million in losses to consumers, many of them elderly.

Norman Newman, 74, of Croton-on-Hudson, NY, brokered lists of consumers' names and addresses to clients he knew were intent on scamming them, according to court documents. Newman's clients were mailing hundreds of thousands of deceptive prize notifications that misled victims into believing that they would receive a cash prize or personalized services upon payment of a fee.

From 2005 to 2016, Newman worked as a list broker and senior vice president at Macromark Inc., a Danbury direct mail services. Macromark pleaded guilty to facilitating elder fraud schemes in September 2020.

While brokering lists, Newman also assisted fraudulent mass mailing clients by engaging the services of data brokerage companies that operated cooperative databases which stored large volumes of demographic and transactional data on American consumers, according to a statement issued Friday by the Justice Department. During the conspiracy, Newman and others "routinely provided samples of clearly fraudulent letters to employees of data brokerage companies, who then provided data to fraudulent mass mailer clients."

"Providing victim lists and other data to help fraudsters target elderly or otherwise vulnerable consumers is a crime," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton of the Justice Department's Civil Division. "The Department of Justice can and will hold responsible individuals and companies who knowingly commit or facilitate these schemes."