Meanwhile, Nancy, a 78-year-old retired financial planner, receives a letter stating that shes won the lottery.
To claim her prize, she just needs to pay the taxes on her winnings.
She isnt sure if the claim is legitimate and is hesitant to proceed.
After years of painstaking work, the FBI agent finally gets the break hes been looking for.
He links a U.S. resident to the lottery-scam ring that operates overseas.
For instance, if you are looking for a job you are more vulnerable to a work-at-home scam.
[00:00:08] Will: Welcome back to AARP - The Perfect Scam.
Frank, welcome back.
[00:00:18] Frank Abagnale: Thanks, Will, glad to be here.
How great it is when you’re able to tell someone, hey, look out.
Again, it’s a great feeling to stop… it’s like stopping somebody from being robbed.
[00:01:33] Frank Abagnale: Absolutely.
This is what they’re doing and they, they inform them about it.
It has to start there.
So it’s much better not to lose your money to begin with.
[00:02:26] Will: All right, Frank, well let’s get into today’s episode.
It is a JOLT scam.
We covered another JOLT scam a few episodes back, and JOLT stands for Jamaican Operations Link to Telemarketing.
It’s a lottery scam.
(phone ring)
[00:02:41] Hello.
[00:02:41] Will: Hi, it’s Will Johnson at AARP.
[00:02:44] Hi, Will.
I heard some good things about you.
[00:02:47] Will: I’ve heard great things about you.
[00:02:48] (laugh)
[00:02:50] Will: That’s Nancy.
She’s also a scam victim, or maybe we should scam survivor.
[00:03:02] Nancy: This all started in December 2014.
We’re going on four and a half years now.
That’s his name, ‘cause they said he was in New York.
[00:04:00] Will: Nancy is excited but cautious.
She tells her son about the letter.
[00:04:15] Will: The letter outlines the tax situation.
American Sweepstakes will pay the federal taxes, but Nancy is responsible for state taxes.
[00:04:36] Will: So Nancy picks up the phone and dials Robert Carson in New York.
[00:04:39] Nancy: I kept telling me, I wasn’t sure about this.
I just wasn’t really sure that I, I wanted to be a part of it.
[00:05:24] Will: So Nancy decides to do it.
[00:05:33] Nancy: And it went to Melinda Bolgin.
Frank Gasper has worked with the FBI for most of his adult life.
He was born and raised in Queens and worked in the New York office for decades.
But then, in 2010, he and his wife moved to North Dakota.
They were ready for a change or an adventure as he calls it.
He set up shop with a small team in an FBI office in Bismarck.
So people were trained to be phone operators.
[00:07:08] Will: Like, like call centers?
[00:07:09] Frank Gasper: Call centers.
It’s a skill.
[00:08:19] Frank Gasper: Yes, it is.
[00:08:46] Will: These are lead lists.
[00:09:02] Frank Gasper: That’s correct.
[00:09:12] Will: As part of your investigation?
And, which is, touches every single field office in the country.
At first it appears she lost more than $150,000.
Her name is Edna.
She’d been sending cashier’s checks in a scam similar to the one Nancy’s caught up in.
[00:09:40] Frank Gasper: Scammers are, they’ll trick you to get initial payment from somebody.
Get them to send out, or say get them to send 50 or 100, whatever they get.
Anywhere from a couple hundred to 500 bucks.
And there’s a whole lot of different reasons why they can get people to send money.
They start hearing from and talking to dozens and dozens of people caught up in the scam.
[00:10:23] Will: Right.
Even after I initial talked to them, people still sent… sent money.
He had, he had to keep going after it.
I mean the victims will, will receive 10, 15, 20 calls a day.
They’re very good in what, figuring the victim’s needs.
And they’re nice.
[00:13:22] Will: Yeah.
[00:13:22] Frank Gasper: And they, they basically cle–, cleaned him out.
I’ve been asked a number of times; how could people keep sending money?
How could they lose so much money?
Because it’s for a number of different reasons.
One is that it’s always that hope.
And so the, that’s why people are able to lose so much money.
[00:14:57] Will: That’s a new one.
We haven’t heard that.
So the scammer will call the police and do a welfare check.
Sometimes they use a home phone.
[00:15:07] Will: And say like, what?
Hey, call me back or we really want to talk to you?
And they’re talking right in front of the police officer.
Well your, your son or daughter said…
[00:15:52] Will: Here he is.
[00:15:53] Frank Gasper: Here it is, and they’ll actually hand the telephone to them.
[00:15:55] Will: Wow.
They’ll pay up to $10 a name for 100 people.
[00:17:06] Will: For people who’ve already fallen victim to a scam?
[00:17:27] Frank Gasper: Yes, they’re called sweepstakes leads.
[00:17:29] Will: Okay.
And I’ve had people from, one of the victims in this case was from New York City.
They want peo–, and that’s why they, what they’re looking for.
The idea is isolate them from society and then they can victimize them.
[00:18:42] Will: Another key element in the scammer’s toolkit is money mules.
So that’s the money laundering aspect of this case.
I know of victims who have lost over a million, a million dollars.
I called the number and I end up getting a hold of Melinda’s mother.
[00:20:14] Will: Frank then calls Melinda’s grandmother in Providence.
She needs to stop, and if she doesn’t, she’s going to get herself in trouble.
[00:20:52] Will: How did Melinda ever get tied into this organization?
She’s a college student.
[00:21:06] Will: Had Melinda made other trips to Jamaica without being detected?
[00:21:18] Frank Gasper: No, she used her own password.
She was actually stopped at the airport.
He hones on a group of people, all friends and family who are running the scam.
[00:21:53] Frank Gasper: A couple people.
[00:22:03] Will: A family operation.
Like I said, all of them were major players in this, in this organization.
And that’s, honestly that’s only a fraction of what that organization took.
It’s not an uncommon tactic, but it’s one reason they’re so successful.
[00:22:37] Frank Gasper: Never threatened them.
[00:22:50] Will: Finally, time comes to take action.
US Marshals and Jamaican authorities line up arrest warrants and move in.
[00:22:57] Frank Gasper: Only one of them turned themselves in.
[00:23:06] Will: Oh wow, so they knew they were uh someone was looking for them.
[00:23:09] Frank Gasper: All 14 were aware that somebody was looking for them.
Overall, more than 30 people are locked up.
Frank Gasper interviews almost all of the scammers behind bars.
The others all make pleas and avoid a trial by jury.
Laveric Willox was the kingpin of the operation, pled guilty in 2017 to avoid a 20 year sentence.
He got 6 years.
She’s not yet been sentenced.
And as is so common in these cases, the money is, for the most part, gone.
The big thing is attempt to prevent people being victimized.
To understand, get the word out that hey, there are no lotteries.
You never have to send money in to get money.
If people call you, you haven’t won anything; hang up the phone.
I, I can’t emphasize that enough.
Hang up the phone.
Don’t be nice, don’t, just hang up the phone.
You haven’t won.
That’s one of the reasons why they think they’ve won, because they get so many calls.
But you haven’t won anything.
But they’re the ones that are exposed.
The actual criminal is never exposed, people are doing it for him.
So you know, when I wrote checks, it was just me.
[00:27:02] Will: And sometimes the mules are innocent.
They don’t know what’s going on.
I mean there’s all these levels of hierarchy if you will.
[00:27:32] Frank Abagnale: Absolutely.
[00:27:34] Will: All right, Frank, we will be back next week.
Thanks for joining us again.
This week we’ll have a, a new scam, new stories, new advice next week.
Be sure to find us on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP - The Perfect Scam, I’m Will Johnson.
