Three Phoenix-area men sentenced to prison for telemarketing fraud scheme

Date: July 22, 2025

Contact: newsroom@ci.irs.gov

Phoenix, AZ — Brian Hopkins, of Chandler, Arizona, was sentenced on July 16, by Senior United States District Court Judge David G. Campbell to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $1.8 million in restitution. Hopkins previously pleaded guilty to mail fraud, conspiring to defraud the United States, and false statement on a tax return. Hopkins is the third co-conspirator to be sentenced in connection with a telemarketing fraud scheme that stole millions of dollars from more than a thousand victims across the country.

Two of Hopkins’ co-conspirators were also sentenced over the last year. Richard Kuhlmann, Jr., of Tempe, Arizona, was sentenced on May 30, 2025, by United States District Court Judge Susan M. Brnovich, to 42 months in prison and ordered to pay $2,140,231 in restitution. Kuhlmann previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States, mail fraud, and transactional money laundering.

David Bartlett, of Scottsdale, Arizona, was sentenced on November 24, 2024, by United States District Court Judge Michael T. Liburdi to 24 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $500,000 in restitution. Barlettt previously pleaded guilty to Mail Fraud.

Kuhlmann and Hopkins owned and operated an Arizona-based telemarketing company that went by various names, including GTT Financial. GTT Financial called potential customers, offering to help reduce their credit card interest rates. Individuals who used GTT Financial’s services to successfully lower their interest rates were then targeted by the fraud scheme. GTT Financial employees, including Bartlett, told victim-customers they could purchase a “sales lead” for $1 and that each “sales lead” represented another potential customer for GTT Financial’s credit card debt service. Victim-customers were promised a portion of any fees paid to GTT from each sales lead and told they would receive a significant return on their investment.

In reality, there was no “sales lead” investment opportunity and money from the victim-customers went to the co-conspirators and other employees of GTT Financial. In total, between 2014 and 2019, the co-conspirators raised more than $10 million for the fictious “sales lead” investment from more than a thousand victim-customers across the United States.

The IRS Criminal Investigation Phoenix Field Office conducted the investigation in this case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Raymond Woo and Matthew Doyle, District of Arizona, handled the prosecution.

IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) is the law enforcement arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a 90% federal conviction rate. The agency has 19 field offices located across the U.S. and 14 attaché posts abroad.