In announcing an indictment against six people, federal officials said a Jamaican lottery scam targeted the vulnerable: mostly elderly victims with diminished mental capacity.
Between January 2012 and March 2015, Maurice Simmonds, 34, Devon A. Grant, 55, Majid Morris, 34, Ashley Hicks-Williams, 29, Melissa Duncan, 29, and Warren Chevannes, 37, allegedly conspired to commit mail, bank and wire fraud in a scheme that netted more than $200,000, said a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Hicks-Williams, who lives in Harrisburg, is the only Pennsylvania resident; the others live in New York, court records said.
Simmonds, the alleged organizer, and some of the other members of the conspiracy were also charged with wire fraud and travel fraud as the result of specifically defrauding an elderly resident of Drexel Hill, the release said.
According to the indictment, Simmonds got a “lead list” from a corporate or federal government employee with the names of those “he believed would be susceptible to being scammed.” The victims were informed that they had won millions in the “Jamaican lottery” but that in order to claim their prize, they first needed to pay tens of thousands of dollars for certain “fees.”
The victims, who lived in Pennsylvania, New York and Tennessee, were repeatedly coerced to provide the conspirators with cash, checks, and property but never received any winnings from the purported lottery, the indictment said.
If convicted, each defendant faces a substantial prison term, possible fines, special assessments, and supervised release. Homeland Security Investigations, the Delaware County District Attorney’s Criminal Investigation Division Senior Exploitation Unit, and the Delaware County Office of Services for the Aging investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Anita Eve will lead the prosecution, the release said.
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