Phone-jam case focuses on Sandpoint firm

POCATELLO, Idaho – The U.S. Department of Justice is reportedly investigating the former owner of a Sandpoint-based company in a phone-jamming case that interrupted a 2002 U.S. Senate election in New Hampshire.

Shaun Hansen co-owned Mylo Enterprises Inc. before shutting down in 2003. He told the Idaho State Journal this week that he received a certified letter informing him of the investigation.

Hansen said his company was contracted by a Virginia-based political consulting firm, GOP Marketplace, to call six different phone numbers belonging to branches of New Hampshire’s Democratic Party and a statewide firefighters union on Nov. 5, 2002. He said he didn’t know what the calls were for, though.

The intent, according to a federal prosecutor, was to limit those organizations’ Get Out the Vote programs by tying up phone lines and preventing any incoming or outgoing calls. GOP Marketplace acted on behalf of the New Hampshire Republican Party, the prosecutor, Todd Hinnen, told a federal judge June 30.

The computer-generated calls went to lines set up for voters who needed rides to the polls in Manchester, Nashua, Rochester and Claremont. The Manchester firefighters’ union phone lines also were affected.

The calls lasted for about two hours before Verizon tracked down the caller and broke the jam.

Many state and federal races were decided that day, including the U.S. Senate race between outgoing Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and Republican Rep. John Sununu. Sununu won.

“We knew that we were calling and hanging up on numbers. We didn’t know what it was for,” said Hansen, who now lives in Deer Park.

He added he and fellow owner Lee LeBlanc thought their instructions were odd, so they met with GOP Marketplace attorneys, who told them not to worry.

“It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I took their word,” Hansen said.

LeBlanc said he believed the company’s work with GOP Marketplace would be legitimate because the two businesses had previously worked together for telephone surveys.

“We were given numbers to call, people to contact and even questions to ask,” he said.

The former president of GOP Marketplace, Allen Raymond, pleaded guilty June 30 to making the computer-generated phone calls. Raymond was freed on personal recognizance pending a sentencing hearing in November.

Chuck McGee, former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, has also been charged with conspiring to jam the Democratic phone banks.

Federal law makes it a crime to conspire to make interstate calls “without disclosing the caller’s identity and with the intent to annoy … or harass any person at the called number.”

Hansen said he dissolved Mylo Enterprises in January 2003 because the company wasn’t profitable.

LeBlanc said he resigned a month earlier after he discovered shady dealings and accounting discrepancies.

The two former owners blame each other for the company’s collapse.

LeBlanc said Mylo Enterprises was founded as a for-profit calling center that helped raise funds for various nonprofit groups.

“Everything that I set up, to my knowledge, was legit,” LeBlanc said.