Authorities say they are making significant progress in curtailing the Jamaica-based cell phone lottery scam that last year bilked elderly Americans of an estimated $300 million.
“We are extremely pleased with the progress being made by the Anti-Lottery Task Force,” said Karl Angell, director of communication for the Jamaican Constabulary Force. “We had some major arrests last week. And there were seizures of several high-end vehicles and other items such as big-screen televisions, computers, scanners, ”
Two Jamaican officials, Kingston Deputy Mayor Michael Troupe and St. James Councilor Sylvan Reid, were among the latest of 142 persons arrested in a police sweep that began July 18. Also arrested were Jevaughn Troupe, the deputy mayor’s 21 year-old son, in raids that netted $13,000 in cash and two guns, the Associated Press reported.
So far, only 19 of the 142 persons detained in the sweep have been charged in connection with the fraud investigation.
Known worldwide for its export of island-style hospitality, Jamaica began to eclipse Nigeria as a center of international telemarketing fraud around 2007. That was around the time when law enforcement made a major crackdown on the illegal drug trade, creating an economic void in western Jamaica that allowed the lottery scam to burgeon, explained Senior Superintendent Fitz Bailey, head of the island’s Organised Crime Investigation Division, in a May 2012 Jamaica Observer article.
Additionally, the emergence of the telemarketing industry in Montego Bay, St. James, also facilitated the growing illicit trade, which ballooned from $30 million in 2009 to $300 million in 2011..
The scammers, officials say, have been living lavishly off their ill-gotten gains.
“They literally burn money. There is a competition to see who can burn the most money. They use champagne to wash their cars. We know of one scammer who owns seven posh houses,” Bailey stated. And, he added, many of the perpetrators are less than 30 years old.
“We have arrested 16- and 17-year-olds. Imagine, a 20-year-old who owns all these expensive assets and can’t account for them. There was one who got someone from Italy to design their house.”
According to officials, about 30,000 calls per day are made by these Jamaican con artists to U.S. residents, most of whom are elderly. The victims are told they have won the Jamaican lottery and need to send U.S. dollars to cover taxes before they can collect their winnings.
“There has been a sharp increase in the number of complaints about these Jamaican lottery scams over the past four or five years,” said Steve Baker, director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Mid-West Region. But even the numbers don’t tell the full tale as an estimated 92 percent of fraud victims don’t lodge a complaint, he added.
U.S. and Jamaican authorities have been working together to dismantle the pervasive criminal network and to educate consumers about the scam through a partnership known as JOLT (Jamaican Operations Linked to Telemarketing).
Bailey suggested the U.S. could be putting pressure on the island nation to clean up the mess as it did with the illegal drug trade. And other officials acknowledge the toll the scandal has had on the country.
Speaking at a media briefing on July 18, Minister of National Security Peter Bunting calling the lotto scam a Tier I security threat, based on the “clear and present” danger it poses to the country.
“It is doing tremendous damage to our reputation internationally. It has the potential to (negatively) impact our tourism product, and our investments, particularly in the information and technology sector,” he said as quoted in a Jamaica Information Service article.
And locally, the criminal network is wreaking even more havoc, particularly in the area of crime.
“We believe there has been a corresponding increase in the level of crime since the lottery scam became a product here in Jamaica,” said Angell, the police spokesman.
Angell said reports that local gangs have been competing to obtain the “lead lists,” a list of potential victims based on private information that commercial businesses harvest and archive from customers who use their credit cards to make purchases, are likely true.
“I would not be surprised that there is infighting between scammers to get the best possible clients,” he said.
