Suburban dad scam artist sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for stealing $600K from jobseekers

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Man admits to scamming hundreds of job seekers out of $638K
Charles Fields of Blaine pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in federal court for a pre-pandemic scheme featured on KARE 11 Investigates.

MINNEAPOLIS — While none of the fraud victims who talked to KARE 11 Investigates had ever met Charles Fields, they all knew his voice.

They took countless phone calls and recorded voice messages from a man who called himself Michael Brunn, convincing them the company Watertek Marketing was offering a great money-making opportunity selling water filtration systems.


While pleading guilty to wire fraud in federal court in Minneapolis on Wednesday, Fields admitted "Michael Brunn" was one of several aliases he used to falsely give his companies an air of credibility.

In one recorded voice message while posing as Michael Brunn, Fields said: "We're not like some company in a garage that said, 'Send us money.' That's not what it is."

At his change of plea hearing, however, Fields admitted that is essentially what his companies amounted to. He would frequently change company names — from Watertek Marketing to Water Innovations Group to Mile High H20 to The New H20.

In the end, Fields scammed 250 people out of $638,739 between 2015 and 2020, he admitted to Judge David Doty.

The victims responded to job postings on Craigslist that promised guaranteed salaries for selling Kangen water ionizers as sales representative

https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/suburban-scam-artist-admits-to-bilking-638k/89-f25e57c0-3762-4a35-8cde-1d75fde40558