I-Team Investigations

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ― The CBS 3 I-Team went undercover in Cherry Hill at a place called KSW.

A sportscast plays on a television and sports emblems are everywhere when we show up in the lobby.

We're replying to one of dozens of internet ads we found.
The job ad is for a sports marketer at KSW.

One reads: "Marketing management for professional sports teams."
And another reads: "If you like sports, then let's get started in a career."

A man named Alex tells us how KSW represented the Sixers at the Phillies championship parade.

"We kicked off the Sixers season and there's no better place to sell Sixers tickets than at a Phillies parade. We made probably millions for the Sixers," Alex said.

The interview lasts only ten minutes.

We're told KSW is a vast business that represents big sports teams, stores and restaurants but did not offer specifics about the position itself.

"We're in the business of making money for everybody," he said.

He says they're going to enter 150 new markets in the next 24 months, but our researcher leaves confused about what the job really would entail.

"Are you a big sports fan? Yes I am a very big sports fan," Carole Wilk told I-Team reporter Jim Osman.

Wilk got laid off from her office job seven months ago.

"It's hard to explain to the kids, yeah, we can't go for pizza tonight. I'm sorry you can't watch nickelodeon tonight because we don't have cable anymore," Wilk told the I-team.

In dire straits, she took a KSW sports marketing job.

"I was excited thinking finally I'm going to be able to put things back together again," Wilk said.

Carole was told to return for day two "wearing comfortable" shoes and she got suspicious.

"He pretty much told me not to wear heels," Wilk said of her interview.
And our undercover researcher who is asked back is told the exact same thing.

The I-Team followed as our researcher is driven by KSW managers from New Jersey to Philadelphia and we soon discovered the job has nothing to do with sports.

"People who apply for that job aren't thinking I'm going to a Home Depot store," said Miranda, the CBS 3 researcher.

Our final destination indeed is a Home Depot in Northeast Philadelphia.

Our researcher learns she's here to solicit consumers to sign up for free estimates on cabinet re-facing. Carole's job turned out to be going door to door selling window treatments.

Painter Joe Ostrowski took a job with the company and ended up in a Vineland, New Jersey neighborhood selling rugs door to door.

"I'm picturing that we're going some place for sports," said Ostrowski.
We found a number of complaints about this company on a website called "Ripoff Report."

When we tried to interview the manager who accompanied our researcher to Home Depot she couldn't explains why KSW currently recruits for sports marketers, and neither would Alex who interviewed our researcher.

The head of KSW, Ken Weinraub, declined to talk with us on camera, but in an email he first told us the sports marketing ad was a mistake and was "not a wise thing" and he apologized.

He says KSW shares office space with a separate sporting marketing firm.
Then Weinraub claimed in another email, KSW has indeed done work for the Sixers and the Philadelphia soul.

The Sixers and the Soul tell us they don't know of a relationship with KSW.

Home Depot which used a subcontractor that hired KSW has said it has severed ties with the company in question.

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