A third-party salesman posing as a Student Services representative went door-to-door to Mesa campus classrooms to hawk paintball tickets during the first week of the spring semester.
Robert Spiers, a Mesa student who is majoring in Aeronautical Engineering, recalled: “At the beginning of the period, a person came by and said ‘I would like to make announcement.’ The professor asked ‘Who are you with?’ and he replied ‘With student services.’” Spiers rolled his eyes and continued, “I had a massive feeling that he was not with student services.”
So did other students, and eventually the word reached the Dean of Student Affairs, Victoria Kerba Miller, who said, “Once we found out we were being misrepresented, we sent an email to the deans that Student Affairs is not affiliated (with the sale of the paintball tickets.)”
With the alert out, the SDCCD Police Department was ready. Sgt Marco Garza of the SDCCD Police Department said: “On (Feb 6th) Officers contacted an individual from Miramar College. He represented a company that was selling paintball tickets. This is not an isolated incident, they go to different colleges.” There have been confirmed reports of this happening at other institutions and even an article published on Nov. 21 by the Citrus College Clarion, in which a salesperson was asked to leave by a professor.
Garza continued, “It’s still an active investigation. He was escorted off campus (at Miramar College). He was advised of an admonishment, saying that if they come back to the campus within seven days, they can be subject to arrest.” Garza could not confirm if the person was a student. “To our knowledge, it was a person who worked for the company,” he said.
According to Garza, typically in the city of San Diego one needs to have a solicitors permit, or a sellers permit, in order to conduct sales. “On top of that if you do come on our district campuses there has to be specific approval from the administration, in this particular case, this wasn’t done,” he said.
In an effort to confirm the validity of the tickets, The Mesa Press contacted Monetary Marketing via the email provided on the tickets. After reaching out to a Mesa Press reporter through a restricted number, a man who would only identify himself as Mike explained, “The tickets work perfectly. He probably should’ve had better approval.” When asked about the sales representative, Mike said, “He’s a 1099, he’s an independent contractor.”
The speaker for the company chose not to provide his full name for the record.
The tickets were confirmed as legitimate by the SDCCD Police Department. The Mesa Press also confirmed the legitimacy of the tickets by contacting the Hollywood Sports Paintball & Airsoft Park, the locale listed on the tickets.
