Man Gets Prison Term for Bilking Investors

The top-ranked salesman at a Canoga Park telemarketing firm that defrauded investors across the county was sentenced Monday to 37 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $4.5 million in restitution.

Aldo Tarallo, 71, of Rancho Mirage and Lake Arrowhead, conned victims into believing that they were investing in companies about to go public, authorities charged.

A federal jury convicted Tarallo in November on six counts of securities fraud and four counts of mail fraud.

In court Monday, U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins rejected a defense plea that Tarallo be sentenced to home detention.

Collins said Tarallo went to work for the firm Intellinet Holdings “with his eyes wide open.”

The judge accused him of refusing to accept responsibility for his misdeeds even after being convicted.

Tarallo, who is free on $250,000 bond, was given until July 22 to surrender to serve his sentence so that he can make arrangements for the care of his seriously ill wife.

Defense attorney Richard Steingard said he would appeal the sentence.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Steve Olson said investors across the country lost a total of about $6.2 million in the scam.

The firm’s president, David Allan Colvin, 57, of Chatsworth, pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to 78 months in prison.

John Larson, 51, of Beverly Hills, the sales manager, was sentenced to 42 months in prison after pleading guilty.

According to evidence presented during Tarallo’s two-week trial, the telemarketers touted investments in an assortment of companies they claimed were on the verge of going public.

The companies included one that supposedly could detoxify a drug addict within 15 minutes and another that was developing a guide to adult sex sites on the Internet.

To lend credibility to their claims, Colvin fabricated a company named Wall Street Research Co., which generated bogus stock analyst reports recommending the investments that he and his staff were promoting.

Olson said Monday that Tarallo took advantage of some victims “again and again and again,” knowing that they were surrendering their life savings to a fraud.

“The defendant’s misrepresentations were blatant,” he told the judge.

The prosecutor asked Collins to sentence Tarallo to 46 months behind bars, the maximum under federal guidelines.

Collins decided, however, to follow the federal probation office’s recommendation of 37 months imprisonment, which is at the low end of the guideline range.