Not long ago, a young man wearing a baggy T-shirt with an image of the German Iron Cross knocked on my door while twitching and sweating. While he appeared to be high on drugs, he was waving a little plastic sheet which said something about "American Community Services." Perhaps because he noticed the NRA sticker on my door, the first words out of his mouth were "Don't shoot, man!" Then he asked me about buying magazines, but he'd already lost the sale because of his general attitude. When he left, I thought I should watch him, and he proceeded to zigzag erratically and impatiently from one side of the street to the other, not seeming to spend enough time for people even to answer the door. I soon forgot about it, but in this morning's Inquirer I read about a 77-year old woman murdered by a representative of the same company. (Better story here.)

This fascinated me, because I have a friend in the Midwest whose home was burglarized the day after she refused to buy magazines. So I Googled the company and found instances of their employees doing all kinds of way-out things, all over the country. . .

Menlo Park, CA:

Police say 19 year-old Dangelo Langford assaulted an 80-year-old woman at her Menlo Park home Wednesday night.

In court Friday, prosecutors hinted there may be other victims in other states.

Langford and others went door to door selling magazine subscriptions for American Community Services based in Indiana.

Sgt. Van Trask, Menlo Park police: "The whole group would be dropped off at certain locations throughout the town and they would solicit magazines all day long and they would be picked up and brought back to like a motel complex and the crew would move on to another city."

Boston, MA:

another magazine salesman was making more mischief in another Bolton neighborhood. Another pair of solicitors had been reported on Kettlehole Road, but was gone when police arrived. It was all fairly routine. According to Nelson, police encounter such groups from time to time, out-of-state magazine subscription outlets in town with a van full of young door-to-door solicitors. The solicitors, usually young adults and teenagers, make their rounds from house to house until police respond to tell them to stop, said Nelson.

What police did not know on June 2, was that one of the two solicitors on Green Road, a 26 year-old woman from Washington D.C., had stolen a box of checks from a mailbox. The Green Road resident did not notice the theft until a bank statement came in August indicating that a check had been written to American Community Services for over $250, according to Nelson. American Community Services is a magazine subscription outlet headquartered in Michigan City, Indiana. The subsequent investigation of the stolen checks led to charges against the Washington D.C. woman for felony larceny by check, felony forgery by check, and misdemeanor theft of the checks themselves. The woman is long gone, and the charges, according to Nelson, will result in a warrant, which will be enforceable should she ever return to Massachusetts. Nelson believes that the theft and forgery were an attempt on the woman's part to meet her sales quota.

American Community Services has been especially busy in Tennessee with THREE notable incidents in the Knoxville area alone:

KNOXVILLE — Two years ago, a door-to-door magazine salesman raped and stabbed to death a Knox County grandmother, but area lawmakers were unable to persuade their colleagues to regulate the industry.

Last May, a salesman affiliated with the same company raped a mother in front of her 2-month-old son in La Vergne in Rutherford County, while in November a registered sex offender selling magazines for another business was accused of fondling a 6-year-old.

All three had criminal histories.

Des Moines, Iowa – A driver with no license and very little driving experience piloted a van that hit the median and overturned after midnight on Interstate 80 west of the city, ejecting nine people. Five agents killed and six injured. May 3, 1992. Crew known as Total Dedication Inc., linked to American Community Services, both of Michigan City, Ind.

8. Boston – A 76-year-old retired beautician was stabbed to death by a Detroit sales agent with American Community Services of Indiana. The salesman, who had a prior rape conviction, had sold a subscription to the victim earlier in the day in suburban Woburn. July 13, 1990.

9. Corvallis, Ore. – Two agents for American Community Services beat a former alderman nearly to death on the courthouse steps after an argument. Aug. 12, 1998.

10. Plano, Texas – An American Community Services salesman raped a 67-year-old woman after pushing his way into her home and threatening her with a kitchen knife. Feb. 19, 1998.

DeBorde’s children, H. Elizabeth Noffisinger and James Michael Potts, are suing American Community Services Inc., an Indiana magazine clearinghouse, for damages in connection withher death. Lloyds provides insurance for ACS.

The wrongful death lawsuit, filed in Knox County Circuit Court in October 2001, accuses ACS of negligence for allowing Broadway, who had just been released from prison when he was hired as a salesman, to hawk the firm’s magazines.

Lloyds, in turn, filed suit in federal court, arguing the policy it issued to ACS excludes coverage for violent acts. Williams called it an "assault exclusion."

"It’s obvious this whole scenario (of DeBorde’s death) was contemplated by these parties when they negotiated the contract," Williams said.

Lloyds’ lawsuit made temporary allies of ACS and attorney Bob Pryor, who is representing DeBorde’s children, at Thursday’s hearing.

Pryor told Jarvis the "assault exclusion" specifically addresses employees of ACS. Broadway was not an employee of ACS but instead was hired by an independent contractor that contracted with ACS to provide a sales force, he said.

He’s two contracts away from ACS," Pryor said of Broadway.

The independent contractor, identified by Pryor as The Real Deal, "goes around in a van, picking up salespeople on the street, in the ghetto or wherever they can," Pryor said.

Broadway was picked up in front of a halfway house where he was living just days after being released from prison, Pryor said. All Broadway was asked to do was fill out a form before he was sent out, Pryor said.

Pryor argued that ACS controls most of th eoperations of the independent contractors and remains responsible for DeBorde’s death. Buthe insisted Lloyds is also on the hook.

"The books are full of magazine salesmen (who commit crimes)," he said. "They had a history of that and concede that it is a hazard of this business."

In what was described as another magazine company's "industry trick," one horrendous driver was supplied with a fake birth certificate to get him back on the road.

I can't spend all day Googling this stuff, but it just goes on and on. Why, there's even a memorial page to the victims of these "traveling crews."

This is not meant to be a crime fighting blog, but it seems to me that the reason these organizations get away with hiring itinerant young thugs is because the crimes they commit are written off as "local crime" when no one has the time or resources to look for any sort of national pattern. I'm sure the vast majority of the crimes they commit are simple home burglaries that attract little to no attention, and are just written off as "unsolved."

When the federal RICO Act was passed, I thought it was unconstitutional, because it was written so broadly. (Originally intended to go after the Mob, RICO has been used for things like the prosecution of anti-abortion protesters.) So why can't RICO be used to prosecute purveyors of interstate carnage and put them out of business?

Until something like that happens, I think the best thing to do is to keep an eye on these "direct sellers" of magazines, while keeping all magazines loaded.

MORE: Another aspect of this phenomenon is mistreatment of itinerant sales people by their employers. Here's a clearinghouse for information to assist the traveling sales crews.