September 29, 2000
Less than a month before he is to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in San Diego on wire fraud charges, Mark Ostrov has been ousted from his sales consultant's post at Electric Mobility Corp. manufacturer of the Rascal line of electric scooters.
Ostrov, 53, faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the wire fraud charge, which grew out of his previous position as CEO of Celebrity Choice Beds. Prosecutors said the company swindled at least 97 customers out of as much as $3,600 for the hospital-style electric beds between May 1997 and January 1998.
Ostrov has been a consultant to Electric Mobility since 1997. In announcing his ouster, company President Michael Flowers said "none of the incidents that are the subject of his guilty plea arose in connection with his service at Electric Mobility." And Flowers said Celebrity Choice Beds was "not affiliated in any way" with Electric Mobility.
Electric Mobility, headquartered in Sewell, NJ, is a family-owned business that was founded in 1974 by the late Francis Flowers, father of the current CEO. The company employs 450 people and has subsidiaries in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Ostrov is scheduled to appear before U.S. District Judge Barry T. Moskowitz in San Diego on Oct. 24. The sentencing date had been set for Sept. 15 but was postponed earlier this month.
Ostrov had been prominently featured in a Web site -- 100grandayear.com -- that recruits sales people for Electric Mobility. The site touted "Mark Ostrov's World Famous Selling System" and hawked a free videotape, "Close With Class by Mark Ostrov," that features high-powered "closing" techniques.
Besides the scooters and powerchairs for which it is best known, Electric Mobility has recently added adjustable hospital-style beds to its product line-up. Its sales recruitment Web site touts the aging of the Baby Boom generation as an "ideal" opportunity for hard-closing in-home salesmen.
During Ostrov's tenure at the helm of Celebrity Choice beds, he advertised nationally on cable channels using former game show host Wink Martindale as his pitchman. The company closed in January 1998 after a Mississippi man complained to federal prosecutors that he had not received his bed.
Officials then found nearly 100 other disappointed customers.
"I had people who sold their old bed or gave it away and they were sitting out there on the front porch waiting for the moving van to deliver it," San Diego U.S. Attorney Bruce Smith told The Associated Press.
The Better Business Bureau said it expelled Celebrity Choice beds in 1996 after receiving complaints about aggressive and misleading sales tactics. It had also expelled the company in 1994 but reinstated it after the company appealed the decision.
