It may sound like a bad Martha Stewart parody, but, authorities say, the scheme illegally raised some $12 million in cash. “It should have been called ‘Women Using Women’,” says Sacramento District Attorney Jan Scully. Some of the defendants walked away with up to $100,000 in cash, while poorer women borrowed from friends and relatives, or took advances from their credit cards to pay for an “appetizer.”
The organizers insist they were doing nothing illegal. “As far as these women were concerned, this was no different than the golf tournaments or football pools that their husbands put money on,” says Bill Portanova, an attorney for Cheryl Bean, a former Pacific Bell executive and one of the accused ringleaders. But if convicted, the women face fines and up to five years in state prison. There, chances are, they won’t have to worry about appetizers or dessert.
