Lotto scammers wash their cars with Champagne

Lottery scammers in Jamaica are earning thousands of dollars a week and using Champagne to wash their cars in a boastful lifestyle, police from the Organised Crime Investigation Division (OCID) have reported.

“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,” head of OCID, senior superintendent Fitz Bailey, said.

Anyone armed with a 4G modem, a mobile phone and a computer phone jack can earn US$120,000 or J$10.2 million a week in the illegal venture commonly known as the “lotto” scam.

The scam is a multimillion-dollar transnational crime. It involves local scammers who have close associates in North America who supply the scammers with what is known as “lead lists”.

A lead list is recorded information that commercial businesses harvest and archive from customers who use their credit cards to make purchases. Sometimes, lead lists are created when customers voluntarily supply information to sign up for discounts, promotions, or loyalty cards.

Bailey explained that the “lotto” scam has mushroomed over the last five years, and added that its growth coincided with efforts by the security forces to clamp down on the illegal drug trade.

In January last year, Mary Kubalak, an elderly widow of Pembroke Pines in South Florida, wired nearly US$400,000 to a scammer in Jamaica.

Just last week, an Illinois family found out that their mother had been duped, and wouldn’t believe them when they tried to tell her she was being scammed. The family complained to police that every day the Jamaican scammers would call and promise that they were trying to hand-deliver her cheque, but their car kept breaking down and they needed money for repairs.