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Woman's Magazine-Selling Job Turns Into Nightmare

POSTED: 1:53 pm PDT May 8, 2009
UPDATED: 4:39 pm PDT May 11, 2009

A stranger at your door might be the subject of an I-Team investigation.

DP Sales Inc. is a traveling sales crew, with about 30 young adults and their managers living out of a motel in Vista.

They've been selling magazines throughout San Diego County for the past six months.

Cassie Bailey told the I-Team she used to work for DP Sales.

"There was about 50 people there to start with," she said.

She started working with the sales crew after seeing its job flier offering high commissions and cash bonuses up to $260 a day.

Bailey told the I-Team her boss, Willie Jackson, would deduct her food and motel room rent from her pay.

"On the weekends I would get about $20," said Bailey.

According to Bailey, she shared her motel room with two men and a woman, and crew members sold drugs out of motel rooms.

After three months on the job, Bailey quit and ended up stranded at an Oceanside bus station.

"I'm worse off than where I was," Bailey said.

Officers who patrol the bus station and agents who work the Greyhound ticket counter told the I-Team they run into magazine sellers who are stuck there all the time.

It's a problem about which Earlene Williams hears a lot.

For 28 years, Williams has run ParentWatch, a volunteer organization that helps young adults abandoned by sales crews get back home.

According to Williams, traveling with a sales crew can be dangerous.

"There are sometimes rapes," she said.

The people who open their doors to sellers are also at risk, she added.

"Some managers, who are careless in their hiring, will hire on criminals," said Williams.

Benjamin Turner was selling door to door in a Boston neighborhood when he allegedly raped a 39-year-old woman and then returned to selling magazines.

Turner had a previous criminal record of forcible sexual abuse and robbery, but that didn't keep him from getting a job with Paragon Management Inc., an Indiana-based company owned by Jackson.

Jackson now owns DP Sales, and the I-Team confronted him at the Vista motel.

"We go from city to city, state to state," he said.

Jackson told the I-Team he takes good care of the people who work for him.

"They got a safe ride to work with a good family environment around here," he said.

Jackson promised to send the I-Team more information about his company but never did.

Bailey found a ticket back home to Baltimore with the help of the I-Team.

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